THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 

GUT  OF 

John  0' Brian 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


BOOKS  FOR  TEACHERS. 

Rousseau's  Emile $  .80 

Pestalozzi's  Leonard  and  Gertrude 80 

Richter's  Levana  :  The  Doctrine  of  Education  .  1.30 
Payne's  Compayre's  History  of  Pedagogy  .  .  1.60 

Hall's  Method  of  Teaching  History 1.30 

Gill's  Systems  of  Education i.oo 

Radestock's  Habit  and  Education 60 

Rosmini's  Method  in  Education  .'.....  1.60 
Peabody's  Lectures  to  Kindergartners  ....  i.oo 
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Gustafson's  Study  of  the  Drink  Question  .  .  .  1.60 
Palmer's  Temperance  Teachings  of  Science  .  .50 

IN  PREPARATION  : 

MacAlister's  Montaigne  on  Education. 
Cox's  Immanuel  Kant  on  Pedagogy. 
Educational  Monographs  : 

I.    Williams'  Modern  Petrography. 
II.    Morris'    Study   of    Latin    in    the    Preparatory 
Course. 

III.  Stafford's    Mathematical     Teaching     and     its 

Modern  Methods. 

IV.  Hall's   How  to  Teach   Reading  and  What   to 

Read  in  School. 

D.  C.  HEATH  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS, 

BOSTON. 


THE 


HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 


BY 

GABRIEL   gOMPAYRE, 

DEPUTY,  DOCTOR  OF  LETTERS,  AND  PROFESSOR  IN  THE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 
OF  FONTENAY-AUX-ROSES. 


TRANSLATED,    WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION, 
NOTES,  AND  AN  INDEX, 


W.   IT.   PAYNE,   A.M., 

PROFESSOR  OF  THE  SCIENCE  AND  THE  ART  OF  TEACHING  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  MICHIGAN  ;  AUTHOR  OF  "  CHAPTERS  ON  SCHOOL  SUPERVISION," 

AND  "OUTLINES  OF  EDUCATIONAL  DOCTRINE." 


BOSTON: 
D.   C.    HEATH   &   COMPANY. 

1886. 


\J 

i3 
CVJ- 


COPTKIGHT,  SEPT.  30,  1885, 
BY  W.  H.  PAYNE. 


J.  8.  CusniNo  &  Co..  PRINTERS,  BOSTON. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE v-vii 

INTRODUCTION ix-xxii 

CHAPTER        I.  —  Education  in  Antiquity 1-16 

CHAPTER       II.  —  Education  among  the  Greeks 17-42 

CHAPTER     III.  —  Education  at  Eome 43-60 

CHAPTER     IV.  —  The  Early  Christians  and  the  Middle  Age. . .     61-82 
CHAPTER       V.  —  The  Renaissance  and  the  Theories  of  Educa- 
tion in  the  Sixteenth  Century.  —  Erasmus, 

Rabelais,  and  Montaigne 83-111 

CHAPTER      VI.  —  Protestantism   and   Primary   Instruction.  — 

Luther  and  Comenius 112-137 

CHAPTER   VII.  —  The  Teaching  Congregations.  —  Jesuits  and 

Jansenists 138-163 

CHAPTER  VIII.  —  Fe'nelon 164-186 

CHAPTER     IX.  — The  Philosophers  of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

—  Descartes,  Malebranche,  and  Locke ....  187-211 
CHAPTER       X.  —  The  Education  of  Women  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century.  —  Jacqueline    Pascal    and    Ma- 
dame de  Maintenon 212-231 

CHAPTER     XI.  —  Rollin 232-252 

CHAPTER  XII.  —  Catholicism  and  Primary  Instruction.  —  La 
Salle  and  the  Brethren  of  the  Christian 
Schools...  ..253-278 


iv  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER     XIII.  —  Rousseau  and  the  Emile 278-310 

CHAPTER      XIV.  —  The  Philosophers  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury.—  Condillac,   Diderot,    Helvetius, 

and  Kant 311-339 

CHAPTER       XV.  —  The  Origin  of  Lay  and  National  Education. 

—  La  Chalotais  and  Holland 340-361 

CHAPTER      XVI.  —  The  Revolution.  —  Mirabeau,  Talleyrand, 

and  Condorcet 362-389 

CHAPTER    XVII.  —  The   Convention.  —  Lepelletier  Saint-Far- 

geau,  Lakanal,  and  Daunou 390-412 

CHAPTER  XVIII.  —  Pestalozzi 413-445 

CHAPTER      XIX.  —  The    Successors   of    Pestalozzi.  —  Froebel 

and  the  Pere  Girard 446-477 

CHAPTER        XX.  —  Women  as  Educators 478-507 

CHAPTER      XXI.  —  The  Theory  and  Practice  of  Education  in 

the  Nineteenth  Century 508-534 

CHAPTER    XXII.  —  The  Science  of  Education.  —  Herbert  Spen- 
cer,  Alexander    Bain,    Channing,    and 

Horace  Mann 535-570 

APPENDIX 571-575 

INDEX.,  577-598 


TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE. 


E  two  considerations  that  have  chiefly  influenced  me  in 
making  this  translation  are  the  following  :  — 

1.  Of  the  three  phases  of  educational  study,  the  prac- 
tical, the  theoretical,  and  the  historical,  the  last,  as  proved 
by  the  number  of  works  written  on  the  subject,  has  received 
but  very  little  attention  from  English  and  American  teach- 
ers ;    and  yet,  if  we  allow  that  a  teacher  should  first  of  all 
be  a  man  of  culture,  and  that  an  invaluable  factor  in  his 
professional  education  is  a  knowledge  of  what  has  hitherto 
been  done  within  his  field  of  activity,  there  are  the  best  of 
reasons  why  the  claims  of  this  study  should  be  urged  upon 
the    teaching    profession.       For    giving    breadth    of    view, 
judicial  candor,  and  steadiness   of   purpose,  nothing   more 
helpful  can  be  commended  to  the  teacher  than  a  critical 
survey   of   the    manifold   experiments   and   experiences   in 
educational  practice.     The  acutest  thinkers  of  all  the  ages 
have  worked  at  the  solution  of  the  educational  problem,  and 
the  educating  art  has  been  practised  under  every  variety  of 
conditions,  civil,   social,  religious,  philosophic,  and  ethnic.  \ 
Is  it  not  time  for  us  to  review  these  experiments,  as  the 

v  ery  best  condition  for  advancing  surely  and  steadily  ? 

2.  The  almost  complete  neglect  of  this  study  among  us 
has  been  due,  in  great  measure,  to  the  fact  that  there  have 


vi  TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE. 

been  no  books  on  the  subject  at  all  adapted  to  the  ends  to 
be  attained.  A  dry,  scrappy,  and  incomplete  narration  of 
facts  can  end  only  in  bewilderment  and  in  blunting  the  taste 
for  this  species  of  inquiry.  The  desirable  thing  has  been 
a  book  that  is  comprehensive  without  being  tedious,  whose 
treatment  is  articulate  and  clear,  and  that  is  pervaded  by  a 
critical  insight  at  once  catholic  and  accurate.  Some  years 
ago  I  read  with  the  keenest  admiration,  the  Histoire  Critique 
des  Doctrines  de  I' Education  en  France  depuis  le  Seizieme 
Siecle,  by  Gabriel  Compayr^  (Paris,  1879)  ;  and  it  seemed 
to  me  a  model,  in  matter  and  method,  for  a  general  history 
of  education.  Within  a  recent  period  Monsieur  Compayre 
has  transformed  this  Histoire  Critique  into  such  a  general 
history  of  education,  under  the  title  Histoire  de  la  Pedagogie, 
In  this  book  all  the  characteristics  of  the  earlier  work  have 
been  preserved,  and  it  represents  to  my  own  mind  very 
nearly  the  ideal  of  the  treatise  that  is  needed  by  the  teach- 
ing profession  of  this  country. 

The  reader  will  observe  the  distinction  made  by  Monsieur 
Compayr6  between  Pedagogy  and  Education.  Though  our 
nomenclature  does  not  sanction  this  distinction,  and  though 
I  prefer  to  give  to  the  term  Pedagogy  a  different  connota- 
tion, I  have  felt  bound  on  moral  grounds  to  preserve  Mon- 
sieur Compayr^'s  use  of  these  terms  wherever  the  context 
would  sanction  it. 

It  seems  mere  squeamishness  to  object  to  the  use  of  the 
word  Pedagogy  on  account  of  historical  associations.  The 
fact  that  this  term  is  in  reputable  use  in  German,  French, 


TRANSLATOR  S   PREFACE.  vii 

and  Italian  educational  literature,  is  a  sufficient  guaranty 
that  we  may  use  it  without  danger.  With  us,  the  term 
Pedagogics  seems  to  be  employed  as  a  synonym  for  Peda- 
gogy. It  would  seem  to  me  better  to  follow  continental 
usage,  and  restrict  the  term  Pedagogy  to  the  art  or  practice 
of  education,  and  Pedagogics  to  the  correlative  science. 

I  feel  under  special  obligations  to  Monsieur  Compayr£, 
and  to  his  publisher,  Monsieur  Paul  Delaplane,  for  their 
courteous  permission  to  publish  this  translation.  I  am  also 
greatly  indebted  to  my  friend,  Mr.  C.  E.  Lowrey,  Ph.D.,  for 
material  aid  in  important  details  of  my  work. 

W.   H.   PAYNE. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN, 
Jan.  4,  1886. 


The  issue  of  a  second  edition  has  permitted  a  careful 
revision  of  the  translation  and  the  correction  of  several 
verbal  errors.  In  subsequent  editions,  no  effort  will  be 
spared  by  the  translator  and  his  publishers  to  make  this 
volume  worthy  of  the  favor  with  which  it  has  been  received 

by  the  educational  public. 

W.  H.  P. 

AUG.  1,  1886. 


IISTTKODUCTICOT. 


WHAT  A  COMPLETE  HISTORY  OF  EDUCATION  WOULD  BE. — 
In  writing  an  elementary  history  of  pedagogy,  I  do  not 
pretend  to  write  a  history  of  education.  Pedagogy  and 
education,  like  logic  and  science,  or  like  rhetoric  and 
eloquence,  are  different  though  analogous  things. 

What  would  a  complete  history  of  education  not 
include?  It  would  embrace,  in  its  vast  developments, 
the  entire  record  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  culture 
of  mankind  at  all  periods  and  in  all  countries.  It  would 
be  a  resumd  of  the  life  of  humanity  in  its  diverse  man- 
ifestations, literary  and  scientific,  religious  and  political. 
It  would  determine  the  causes,  so  numerous  and  so  diverse, 
which  act  upon  the  characters  of  men,  and  which,  modi- 
fying a  common  endowment,  produce  beings  as  different 
as  are  a  contemporary  of  Pericles  and  a  modern  Euro- 
pean, a  Frenchman  of  the  middle  ages  and  a  Frenchman 
subsequent  to  the  Revolution. 

In  fact,  there  is  not  only  an  education,  properly  so  called, 
that  which  is  given  in  schools  and  which  proceeds  from 
the  direct  action  of  teachers,  but  there  is  a  natural  educa- 
tion, which  we  receive  without  our  knowledge  or  will, 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

through  the  influence  of  the  social  environment  in  which 
we  live.  There  are  what  a  philosopher  of  the  clay  has 
ingeniously  called  the  occult  coadjutors  of  education,  — 
climate,  race,  manners,  social  condition,  political  institu- 
tions, religious  beliefs.  If  a  man  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury is  very  unlike  a  man  of  the  seventeenth  century,  it 
is  not  merely  because  the  first  was  educated  in  a  Lycee 
of  the  University  and  the  other  in  a  college  of  the 
Jesuits ;  it  is  also  because  in  the  atmosphere  in  which 
they  have  been  enveloped  they  have  contracted  differ- 
ent habits  of  mind  and  heart ;  it  is  because  the}'  have 
grown  up  under  different  laws,  under  a  different  social 
and  political  regime;  because  they  have  been  nurtured 
by  a  different  philosophy  and  a  different  religion.  Upon 
that  delicate  and  variable  composition  known  as  the  human 
soul,  how  many  forces  which  we  do  not  suspect  have  left 
their  imprint !  How  many  unobserved  and  latent  causes 
are  involved  in  our  virtues  and  in  our  faults  !  The  con- 
scious and  determined  influence  of  the  teacher  is  not, 
perhaps,  the  most  potent.  In  conjunction  with  him  are 
at  work,  obscurely  but  effectively,  innumerable  agents, 
besides  personal  effort  and  what  is  produced  b}'  the  original 
energy  of  the  individual. 

We  see  what  a  history  of  education  would  be  :  a  sort 
of  philosophy  of  history,  to  which  nothing  would  be  for- 
eign, and  which  would  scrutinize  in  its  most  varied  and 
most  trifling  causes,  as  well  as  in  its  most  profound  sources, 
the  moral  life  of  humanity. 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 

WHAT    AN    ELEMENTARY  HISTORY  OF    PEDAGOGY   SHOULD 

BE.  —  Wholly  different  is  the  limited  and  modest  purpose 
of  a  history  of  pedagogy,  which  proposes  merely  to  set 
forth  the  doctrines  and  the  methods  of  educators  properly 
so  called.  In  this  more  limited  sense,  education  is  reduced 
to  the  premeditated  action  which  the  will  of  one  man 
exercises  over  other  men  in  order  to  instruct  them  and 
train  them.  It  is  the  reflective  auxiliary  of  the  natural 
development  of  the  human  soul.  To  what  can  be  done 
by  nature  and  by  the  blind  and  fatal  influences  which 
sport  with  human  destiny,  education  adds  the  concurrence 
of  art,  that  is,  of  the  reason,  attentive  and  self-possessed, 
which  voluntarily  and  consciously  applies  to  the  training 
of  the  soul  principles  whose  truth  has  been  recognized, 
and  methods  whose  efficiency  has  been  tested  by  expe- 
rience. 

Even  thus  limited,  the  history  of  pedagogy  still  presents 
to  our  inquiry  a  vast  field  to  be  explored.  There  is  scarcely 
a  subject  that  has  provoked  to  the  same  degree  as  educa- 
tion the  best  efforts  of  human  thinking.  Note  the  cata- 
logue of  educational  works  published  in  French,  which 
Buisson  has  recently  prepared.1  Though  incomplete,  this 
list  contains  not  less  than  two  thousand  titles  ;  and  prob- 
ably educational  activity  has  been  more  fruitful,  and  has 
been  given  a  still  greater  extension  in  Germany  than  in 
France.  This  activity  is  due  to  the  fact,  first  of  all,  that 

1  See  the  Dictionnaire  de  Pe'dayoyie,  by  F.  Buisson,  Article  Biblioyra- 
phie. 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 

educational  questions,  brought  into  fresh  notice  with  each 
generation,  exercise  over  the  ininds  of  men  an  irresistible 
and  perennial  attraction  ;  and  also  to  the  fact  that  parent- 
hood inspires  a  taste  for  such  inquiries,  and,  a  thing  that 
is  not  always  fortunate,  leads  to  the  assumption  of  some 
competence  in  such  matters  ;  and  finally  to  the  very  nature 
of  educational  problems,  which  are  not  to  be  solved  by 
abstract  and  independent  reasoning,  after  the  fashion  of 
mathematical  problems,  but  which,  vitally  related  to  the 
nature  and  the  destiny  of  man,  change  and  vary  with  the 
fluctuations  of  the  psychological  and  the  moral  doctrines 
of  which  they  are  but  the  consequences.  To  different 
systems  of  psychology  correspond  different  systems  of 
education.  An  idealist,  like  Malebranche,  will  not  reason 
upon  education  after  the  manner  of  a  sensationalist  like 
Locke.  In  the  same  way  there  is  in  every  system  of  morals 
the  germ  of  a  characteristic  and  original  system  of  educa- 
tion. A  mystic,  like  Gerson,  will  not  assign  to  education 
the  same  end  as  a  practical  and  positive  writer  like  Herbert 
Spencer.  Hence  a  very  great  diversity  in  systems,  or  at 
least  an  infinite  variety  in  the  shades  of  educational  opinion. 
Still  farther,  educational  activity  may  manifest  itself  in 
different  ways,  either  in  doctrines  and  theories  or  in 
methods  and  practical  applications.  The  historian  of  ped- 
agogy has  not  merely  to  make  known  the  general  concep- 
tions which  the  philosophers  of  education  have  in  turn 
submitted  to  the  approbation  of  men.  If  he  wishes  to 
make  his  work  complete,  he  must  give  a  detailed  account 


INTRODUCTION.  Xlll 

of  what  has  been  accomplished,  and  make  an  actual  study 
of  the  educational  establishments  which  have  been  founded 
at  different  periods  by  those  who  have  organized  instruction. 
Pedagogy  is  a  complex  affair,  and  there  are  many  ways 
of  writing  its  history.  One  of  these  which  has  been  too 
little  considered,  and  which  would  surely  be  neither  the 
least  interesting  nor  the  least  fruitful,  would  consist  in 
studying,  not  the  great  writers  on  education  and  their 
doctrines,  not  the  great  teachers  and  their  methods,  but 
pupils  themselves.  If  it  were  possible  to  relate  in  minute 
detail,  supposing  that  history  would  furnish  us  the  neces- 
sary information  on  this  point,  the  manner  in  which  a  great 
or  a  good  man  has  been  educated ;  if  an  analysis  could  be 
made  of  the  different  influences  which  have  been  involved 
in  the  formation  of  talent  or  in  the  development  of  virtue 
in  the  case  of  remarkable  individuals ;  if  it  were  possible, 
in  a  word,  to  reproduce  through  exact  and  personal  biogra- 
phies the  toil,  the  slow  elaboration  whence  have  issued  at 
different  periods  solidity  of  character,  rectitude  of  purpose, 
and  minds  endowed  with  judicial  fairness  ;  the  result  would 
be  a  useful  and  eminently  practical  work,  something  analo- 
gous to  what  a  history  of  logic  would  be,  in  which  there 
should  be  set  forth  not  the  abstract  rules  and  the  formal 
laws  for  the  search  after  truth,  but  the  successful  experi- 
ments and  the  brilliant  discoveries  which  have  little  by 
little  constituted  the  patrimony  of  science.  This  perhaps 
would  be  the  best  of  logics  because  it  is  real  and  in  action  ; 
and  also  the  best  of  treatises  on  pedagogy,  since  there 


xiV  INTRODUCTION. 

might  be  learned  from  it,  not  general  truths,  which  are 
often  of  difficult  application  and  of  uncertain  utility,  but 
practical  means  and  living  methods  whose  happy  and  effi- 
cient applications  would  be  seen  in  actual  use. 

We  have  just  traced  the  imaginary  plan  of  a  history  of 
pedagogy  rather  than  the  exact  outline  of  the  series  of 
lessons  which  this  book  contains.  However,  we  have 
approached  this  ideal  as  nearly  as  we  have  been  able,  by 
attempting  to  group  about  the  principal  philosophical  and 
moral  ideas  the  systems  of  education  which  they  have 
inspired  ;  by  endeavoring  to  retain  whatever  is  essential ; 
by  adding  to  the  first  rapid  sketches  studied  and  elaborate 
portraits  ;  by  ever  mingling  with  the  expositions  of  doc- 
trines and  the  analysis  of  important  works  the  study  of 
practical  methods  and  the  examination  of  actual  institu- 
tions ;  and,  finally,  by  penetrating  the  thought  of  the 
great  educators,  to  learn  from  them  how  they  became  such, 
and  by  following  them,  as  they  have  united  practice  with 
theory,  in  the  particular  systems  of  education  which  thev 
have  directed  with  success.1 

DIVISION  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY.  —  The  abun- 
dance and  the  variety  of  pedagogical  questions,  the  givat 
number  of  thinkers  who  have  written  upon  education,  in 
a  word,  the  complexity-  of  the  subject,  might  inspire  the 

1  The  book  now  offered  to  the  public  was  taught  before  it  was  written. 
It  is  the  result  of  the  lectures  given  for  three  years  past,  either  at  the 
higher  normal  school  of  Fontenay-aux-Roses,  or  in  the  normal  courses  for 
men  at  Sevres  and  at  Saint  Cloud. 


INTRODUCTION.  XV 

historian  of  pedagogy  with  the  idea  of  dividing  his  work, 
and  of  distributing  his  studies  into  several  series.  For 
example,  it  would  be  possible  to  write  the  history  of  educa- 
tion in  general  by  itself,  and  then  the  history  of  instruction, 
which  is  but  an  element  of  education.  As  education  itself 
comprises  three  parts,  physical  education,  intellectual  edu- 
cation, and  moral  education,  there  would  be  an  opportu- 
nity for  three  series  of  distinct  studies  on  these  different 
subjects.  But  these  divisions  would  present  grave  incon- 
veniences. In  general,  the  opinions  of  an  educator  are 
not  susceptible  of  division  ;  there  is  a  connection  between 
his  manner  of  regarding  the  matter  of  instruction  and  the 
solution  he  gives  to  educational  questions  proper.  One 
mode  of  thinking  pervades  his  theories  or  his  practice  in 
the  matter  of  moral  discipline,  and  his  ideas  on  intellectual 
education.  It  is,  then,  necessary  to  consider  each  of  the 
different  systems  of  education  as  a  whole. 

Perhaps  a  better  order  of  division  would  be  that  which, 
without  regard  to  chronological  order,  should  distinguish 
all  pedagogical  doctrines  and  applications  into  a  certain 
number  of  schools,  and  connect  all  educators  with  certain 
general  tendencies :  as  the  ascetic  tendency,  that  of  the 
fathers  of  the  church,  for  example,  and  of  the  middle 
ages ;  the  utilitarian  tendency  of  Locke,  and  of  a  great 
number  of  moderns ;  the  pessimism  of  Port  Royal,  the 
optimism  of  Fe*nelon  ;  the  literary  school  of  the  humanists 
of  the  Renaissance,  and  the  scientific  school  of  Diderot 
and  of  Condorcet.  Such  a  mode  of  procedure  would  have 


XVI  INTRODUCTION. 

its  interest,  because  in  the  manifestations  of  educational 
thought  so  apparently  different  it  would  sharply  distin- 
guish certain  uniform  principles  which  reappear  at  all 
periods  of  history  ;  but  this  would  be  rather  a  philosophy 
of  the  history  of  education  than  a  simple  history  of 
pedagogy. 

The  best  we  can  do,  then,  is  to  follow  the  chronological 
order  and  to  study  in  turn  the  educators  of  antiquity, 
those  of  the  middle  ages,  of  the  Renaissance,  and  of 
modern  times.  "We  shall  interrogate  in  succession  those 
who  have  become  eminent  as  teachers  and  educators,  and 
ask  of  each  how  he  has  solved  for  himself  the  various 
portions  of  the  problems  of  education.  Besides  being 
more  simple  and  more  natural,  this  order  has  the  advan- 
tage of  showing  us  the  progress  of  education  as  it  has 
gradually  risen  from  instinct  to  reflection,  from  nature  to 
art,  and  after  long  periods  of  groping  and  many  halts, 
ascending  from  humble  beginnings  to  a  complete  and  defi- 
nite organization.  This  plan  also  exhibits  to  us  the  beau- 
tiful spectacle  of  a  humanity  in  a  state  of  ceaseless  growth. 
At  first,  instruction  comprised  but  few  subjects,  at  the 
same  time  that  only  a  select  few  participated  in  it.  Then 
there  was  a  simultaneous  though  gradual  extension  of  the 
domain  of  knowledge  which  must  be  acquired,  of  the 
moral  qualities  demanded  by  the  struggle  for  existence, 
and  of  the  number  of  men  who  are  called  to  be  instructed 
and  educated,  —  the  ideal  being,  as  Comenius  has  said, 
that  all  may  learn  and  that  everything  may  be  taught. 


INTRODUCTION.  XVil 

UTILITY  OP  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY.  —  The  history  of 
pedagogy  is  henceforth  to  form  a  part  of  the  course  of 
study  for  the  primary  normal  schools  of  France.  It  has 
been  included  in  the  prescribed  list  of  subjects  for  the  third 
year,  under  this  title :  History  of  Pedagogy,  —  Principal 
educators  and  their  doctrines;  Analysis  of  the  most  important 
works.1 

Is  argument  necessary  to  justify  the  place  which  has 
been  assigned  to  this  study  ?  In  the  first  place,  the  history 
of  pedagogy  possesses  great  interest  from  the  fact  that 
it  is  closely  connected  with  the  general  history  of  thought 
and  also  with  the  philosophic  explication  of  human  actions. 
Certainly,  pedagogical  doctrines  are  neither  fortuitous 
opinions  nor  events  without  significance.  On  the  one  hand, 
they  have  their  causes  and  their  principles  in  moral,  reli- 
gious, and  political  beliefs,  of  which  they  are  the  faithful 
image ;  on  the  other,  they  are  instrumental  in  the  train- 
ing of  mind  and  in  the  formation  of  manners.  Back  of 
the  Ratio  Studioram  of  the  Jesuits,  back  of  the  Emile 
of  Rousseau,  there  distinctly  appears  a  complete  religion, 
a  complete  philosophy.  In  .the  classical  studies  organ- 
ized by  the  humanists  of  the  Renaissance  we  see  the 
dawn  of  that  literary  brilliancy  which  distinguished  the 
century  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  so  in  the  scientific  studies 
preached  a  hundred  years  ago  by  Diderot  and  b}*  Condorcet 
there  was  a  preparation  for  the  positive  spirit  of  our  time. 
The  education  of  the  people  is  at  once  the  consequence 

1  Resolution  of  Aug.  3,  1881. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION. 

of  all  that  it  believes  and  the  source  of  all  that  it  is 
destined  to  be. 

But  there  are  other  reasons  which  recommend  the  study 
of  educators  and  the  reading  of  their  works.  The  his- 
tory of  pedagogy  is  a  necessary  introduction  to  pedagogy 
itself.  It  should  be  studied,  not  for  purposes  of  erudi- 
tion or  for  mere  curiosity,  but  with  a  practical  purpose 
for  the  sake  of  finding  in  it  the  permanent  truths  which 
are  the  essentials  of  a  definite  theory  of  education. 
The  desirable  thing  just  now  is  not  perhaps  so  much 
to  find  new  ideas,  as  properly  to  comprehend  those  which 
are  already  current;  to  choose  from  among  them,  and, 
a  choice  once  having  been  made,  to  make  a  resolute  effort 
to  apply  them  to  use.  When  we  consider  with  impar- 
tiality all  that  has  been  conceived  or  practised  previous 
to  the  nineteenth  century,  or  when  we  see  clearly  what 
our  predecessors  have  left  us  to  do  in  the  way  of  con- 
sequences to  deduce,  of  incomplete  or  obscure  ideas  to 
generalize  or  to  illustrate,  and  especially  of  opposing 
tendencies  to  reconcile,  we  may  well  inquire  what  they 
have  really  left  us  to  discover. 

It  is  profitable  to  study  even  the  chimeras  and  the 
educational  errors  of  our  predecessors.  In  fact,  these 
are  so  many  marked  experiments  which  contribute  to  the 
progress  of  our  methods  by  warning  us  of  the  rocks 
which  we  should  shun.  A  thorough  analysis  of  the 
paradoxes  of  Rousseau,  and  of  the  absurd  consequences 
to  which  the  abuse  of  the  principle  of  nature  leads  us, 


INTRODUCTION.  xix 

is  no  less  instructive  than  meditation  on  the  wisest 
precepts  of  Montaigne  or  of  Port  Royal. 

In  truth,  for  him  who  has  an  exact  knowledge  of  the 
educators  of  past  centuries,  the  work  of  constructing  a 
system  of  education  is  more  than  half  done.  It  remains 
only  to  co-ordinate  the  scattered  truths  which  have  been 
collected  from  their  works  by  assimilating  them  through 
personal  reflection,  and  by  making  them  fruitful  through 
psychological  analysis  and  moral  faith. 

Let  it  be  observed  that  as  studied  by  the  men  who 
first  conceived  and  practised  them,  pedagogical  methods 
present  themselves  to  our  examination  with  a  sharpness 
of  outline  that  is  surprising.  Innovators  lend  to  what- 
ever they  invent  a  personal  emphasis,  something  life-like 
and  occasionally  extravagant ;  but  it  is  exactly  this  which 
permits  us  the  better  to  comprehend  their  thought,  and 
the  more  completely  to  discover  its  truth  or  its  falsity. 

However,  it  is  not  alone  the  intellectual  advantage 
which  recommends  the  history  of  pedagogy ;  it  is  also 
the  moral  stimulus  which  will  be  derived  from  the  study. 
For  the  sake  of  encouraging  to  noble  efforts  the  men 
and  women  who  are  our  teachers,  is  it  of  no  moment 
to  present  to  them  the  names  of  Comenius,  Rollin,  and 
Pestalozzi  as  men  who  have  attained  such  high  excellence 
in  their  profession?  Will  not  the  teacher  who  each  day 
resumes  his  heavy  burden  be  revived  and  sustained? 
Will  he  not  enter  his  class-room,  where  so  man}'  diffi- 
culties and  toils  await  him,  a  better  and  a  stronger  man 


XX  INTRODUCTION. 

if  his  imagination  teems  with  articulate  memories  of  those 
who,  in  the  past,  have  opened  for  him  the  way,  and 
shown  him  by  their  example  how  to  walk  in  it?  By 
the  marvellous  agency  of  electricity  we  are  now  able  to 
transport  material  and  mechanical  power,  and  to  cause 
its  transfer  across  space  without  regard  to  distance.  But 
by  reading  and  by  meditation  we  arc  able  to  do  some- 
thing analogous  to  this  in  the  moral  world  ;  we  are  able 
to  borrow  from  the  ancients,  across  the  centuries,  some- 
thing of  the  moral  energy  that  inspired  them,  and  to 
make  live  again  in  our  own  hearts  some  of  their  virtues 
of  devotion  and  faith.  Doubtless  a  brief  history  of 
pedagogy  could  not,  from  this  point  of  view,  serve  as 
a  substitute  for  the  actual  reading  of  the  authors  in 
question ;  but  it  is  a  preparation  for  this  work  and 
inspires  a  taste  for  it. 

We  are  warranted  in  saying,  then,  that  the  utility  of 
1  the  history  of  pedagogy  blends  with  the  utility  of  ped- 
agogy itself.  To-day  it  is  no  longer  necessary  for  us  to 
offer  any  proof  on  this  point.  Pedagogy,  long  neglected 
even  in  our  country,  has  regained  its  standing  ;  nay 
more,  it  has  become  the  fashion.  "France  is  becoming 
addicted  to  pedagogy"  was  a  remark  recently  made  by 
one  of  the  men  who,  of  our  day,  will  have  contributed 
most  to  excite  and  also  to  direct  the  taste  for  peda- 
gogical studies.1  The  words  pedagogue,  pedagogy,  have 

1  See  the  Article  of  M.  Pecaut  in  the  Revue  Pedayoyique,  No.  2,  1882. 


INTRODTJCTrON.  XXI 

encountered  dangers  in  the  history  of  our  language. 
Littre"  tells  us  that  the  word  pedagogue  "  is  most  often 
used  in  a  bad  sense."  On  the  other  hand,  we  shall 
see,  if  we  consult  his  dictionary,  that  several  years  ago 
the  sense  of  the  word  pedagogy  was  not  yet  fixed, 
since  it  is  there  defined  as  4t  the  moral  education  of 
children."  To-day,  not  only  in  language,  but  in  facts  and 
in  institutions,  the  fate  of  pedagogy  is  settled.  Of  course 
we  must  neither  underrate  it  nor  attribute  to  it  a  sovereign 
and  omnipotent  efficiency  that  it  does  not  have.  We 
might  freely  say  of  pedagogy  what  Sainte-Beuve  said 
of  logic :  The  best  is  that  which  does  not  argue  in  its 
own  favor ;  which  is  not  enamoured  of  itself,  but  which 
modestly  recognizes  the  limits  of  its  power.  The  best 
is  that  which  we  make  for  ourselves,  not  that  which  we 
learn  from  books. 

Even  with  this  reserve,  the  teaching  of  pedagogy  is 
destined  to  render  important  services  to  the  cause  of 
education,  and  education,  let  us  be  assured,  is  in  the 
way  of  acquiring  a  fresh  importance  da}'  by  day.  This 
is  due  to  the  fact,  first,  that  under  a  liberal  govern- 
ment, and  in  a  republican  society,  it  is  more  and 
more  necessary  that  the  citizens  shall  be  instructed  and 
enlightened.  Liberty  is  a  dangerous  thing  unless  it  has 
instruction  for  a  counterpoise.  Moreover,  we  must  rec- 
ollect that  in  our  day,  among  those  occult  coadjutors  of 
which  we  have  spoken,  and  which  at  all  times  add  their 
action  to  that  of  education  proper,  some  have  lost  their 


XXll  INTRODUCTION. 

influence,  while  others,  so  far  from  co-operating  in  this 
movement,  oppose  it  and  compromise  it.  On  the  one 
hand,  religion  has  seen  her  influence  curtailed.  She  is 
no  longer,  as  she  once  was,  the  tutelary  power  under 
whose  shadow  the  rising  generations  peacefully  matured. 
It  is  necessary  that  education,  through  the  progress  of 
the  reason  and  through  the  reflective  development  of 
morality,  should  compensate  for  the  waning  influence  of 
religion. 

On  the  other  hand,  social  conditions,  the  very  progress 
of  civil  and  political  liberty,  the  growing  independence 
accorded  the  child  in  the  family,  the  multiplication  of 
books,  good  and  bad,  all  these  collateral  agents  of  educa- 
tion are  not  always  compliant  and  useful  aids.  They 
would  prove  the  accomplices  of  a  moral  decadence  did 
not  our  teachers  make  an  effort  as  much  more  vigorous 
to  affect  the  will  and  the  heart,  as  well  as  the  mind, 
in  order  to  establish  character,  and  thus  assure  the  re- 
cuperation of  our  country. 


A   SKETCH   OF   THE   LIFE    OF   GABRIEL 
COMPAYRE.1 


GABRIEL  COMPAYRE  was  born  Jan.  2,  1843,  at  Albi,  a 
city  of  Southern  France,  containing  about  fifteen  thousand 
inhabitants,  and  the  capital  of  the  province  of  Tarn.  His 
early  education  was  received  from  his  father,  a  man  of 
sterling  character,  and  the  author  of  a  book  entitled,  His- 
torical Studies  Concerning  the  Albigenses. 

He  passed  from  his  father's  care  to  the  college  of  Castres, 
then  to  the  lycee  of  Toulouse,  and  finally  to  the  lycee  Louis- 
le-Grand  at  Paris.  His  fellow-pupils  recall  with  pleasure 
his  triumphs  at  these  institutions  of  learning.  His  brilliant 
intellectual  powers,  his  vivid  imagination,  his  well-stored 
memory,  and  his  unwearied  industry,  marked  him  as  des- 
tined to  render  signal  services  to  his  race. 

He  entered  the  Ecole  Normale  Superieure  in  1862.  His 
tastes  led  him  to  philosophical  studies ;  indeed,  he  had 
already  manifested  a  strong  tendency  to  moral  and  intel- 
lectual science.  Yet  his  intensely  practical  nature  could 
not  long  remain  satisfied  with  metaphysical  subtleties  where 
he  found  no  sure  foot-hold.  He  became  a  warm  advocate 
of  experimental  methods,  and  of  the  Baconian  philosophy. 
He  set  himself  to  a  study  of  man  as  he  appears  in  society 

1  Furnished  by  Mr.  Geo.  E.  Gay,  Principal  of  the  Maiden  High  School. 


XXIV  LIFE   OF   GABRIEL   COMPAYRB. 

and  in  the  family  ;  to  the  analysis  of  his  emotions  and  his 
acts,  and  to  the  deduction,  from  these  analyses,  of  those 
rules  which  ought  to  preside  over  his  conduct  and  his  intel- 
lectual and  moral  development. 

He  graduated  from  the  normal  school  in  1865,  and  was 
immediately  appointed  professor  of  philosophy  at  the  lycee 
of  Pau.  A  lecture  upon  Rousseau,  which  he  delivered  here, 
brought  upon  him  the  severe  condemnation  of  the  ultra- 
montane party,  and  involved  him  in  a  controversy  which 
has  continued  to  the  present  time. 

In  1868,  having  been  made  a  fellow  of  the  University,  he 
was  sent  to  the  lycee  of  Poitiers.  At  this  place  he  mani- 
fested his  sympathy  for  the  common  people  by  a  course  of 
lectures  to  workmen  on  moral  subjects.  About  this  time 
he  received  honorable  mention  from  ihe  Academy  for  an 
eloquent  eulogy  upon  Rousseau,  in  which  he  carefully  por- 
trayed the  influence  of  Rousseau  upon  the  government  of 
his  country  and  upon  methods  of  school  instruction,  giving 
him  full  credit  for  the  reform  in  both. 

From  this  time  forward  Compayr^'s  life  has  been  filled 
with  labors  and  with  honors.  In  addition  to  his  pro- 
fessional duties  and  philosophical  writings,  he  has  made 
careful  study  of  the  social  and  political  questions  of  his 
country. 

Promoted  from  one  post  of  honor  to  another,  on  the 
14th  of  July,  1880,  he  was  appointed  Chevalier  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor. 

In  1874  he  presented  his  theme  for  his  doctor's  degree 
upon  the  Philosophy  of  Darid  Hume,  a  work  of  the  highest 


LIFE   OF    GABRIEL   COMPAYEE.  XXV 

philosophical  thought  and  language,  which  received  a  prize 
from  the  Academy. 

Between  1874  and  1880  his  lectures  were  largely  devoted 
to  the  subjects  most  closely  connected  with  modern  thought. 
A  Study  of  Darwinism,  The  Psychology  of  a  Child,  Educa- 
tional Principles,  are  subjects  that  indicate  the  sweep  of 
his  investigations.  The  brilliancy  of  his  style,  the  liber- 
ality of  his  opinions,  and  the  extent  of  his  learning  have 
exposed  him  to  bitter  attacks  from  those  who  envy  his 
powers  and  disbelieve  his  doctrines  ;  yet  his  popularity  has 
continually  increased,  and  the  young  professor  has  become 
a  great  power  in  the  party  of  the  republic,  to  whose  cause 
he  early  devoted  himself. 

The  works  which  he  published  during  this  period  were 
numerous.  He  translated  with  great  care,  adding  valua- 
ble matter  of  his  own :  Bain's  Inductive  and  Deductive 
Logic,  Huxley's  Hume,  His  Life  and  Philosophy,  and 
Locke's  Thoughts  on  Education.  His  most  considerable 
work  is  his  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  Education  in  France 
since  the  Sixteenth  Century,  a  work  of  two  volumes,  pub- 
lished in  1879,  which  reached  its  fourth  edition  in  France 
in  1883,  has  been  translated  entire  into  German,  and 
from  which  numerous  extracts  have  been  made  for  the 
educational  journals  of  England  and  America.  If  we  add 
to  these  labors  his  work  upon  the  Revue  Philosophique, 
and  the  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic,  we  shall  understand 
why  he  was  called  to  Paris  in  1881,  by  the  Minister  of 
Public  Instruction,  to  aid  in  founding  the  Ecole  Nonnale 
Superieure  des  Institutrices,  de  Fontenay-aux- Roses.  He 


XXVI  LIFE   OP    GABRIEL   COMPAYRE. 

successfully  arranged  the  course  of  instruction  for  this 
school.  In  the  same  year  he  assisted  in  the  organization 
of  a  new  school  at  Sevres,  which  prepares  young  teachers 
for  the  course  of  instruction  in  the  normal  schools. 

In  1880  he  published  his  Manual  of  Civil  and  Moral 
Instruction,  in  two  courses,  or  parts.  This  book  has  had 
a  remarkable  career.  In  less  than  three  years  more  than, 
three  hundred  thousand  copies  of  the  first  part,  and  over 
five  hundred  thousand  of  the  second  part,  were  sold. 

In  1882,  in  conjunction  with  a  friend,  M.  A.  Delplan, 
an  author  of  merit,  he  published  his  Civil  and  Moral  Lec- 
tures. In  1883  he  published  a  Course  of  Civil  Instruction 
for  normal  schools. 

Compayr£  entered  political  life  in  1881,  having  been 
elected  deputy  from  the  arrondissement  of  Lavaur  in  Tarn. 
He  occupies  a  distinguished  position  among  the  men  of 
to-day  ;  his  character,  his  talents,  his  popularity,  and  his 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  civil  and  intellectual  freedom, 
give  him  the  assurance  of  a  place  no  less  important  among 
the  men  of  the  future. 

In  his  personal  appearance  Compayre*  combines  the 
scholar  and  the  man  of  the  world.  His  dark  hair,  parted 
in  the  middle,  is  combed  back  from  a  forehead  very  high 
and  very  broad.  His  eye  is  bright  and  piercing,  and  his 
face,  clean  shaven  except  upon  the  upper  lip,  bears  the 
impress  of  both  his  ingenuousness  and  his  indomitable 
perseverance. 


THE 

HISTOET    OF    PEDAGOGY. 
CHAPTER  I. 

EDUCATION    IN   ANTIQUITY. 

PRELIMINARY  CONSIDERATIONS;  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  HINDOOS; 
POLITICAL  CASTE  AND  RELIGIOUS  PANTHEISM;  EFFECTS  ON  EDUCA- 
TION ;  BUDDHISTIC  REFORM;  CONVERSATION  OF  BUDDHA  AND 

PURNA  ;  EDUCATIONAL  USAGES;  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  ISRAEL- 
ITES J  PRIMITIVE  PERIOD ;  RELIGIOUS  AND  NATIONAL  EDUCATION  ; 
PROGRESS  OF  POPULAR  INSTRUCTION;  ORGANIZATION  OF  SCHOOLS; 
RESPECT  FOR  TEACHERS;  METHODS  AND  DISCIPLINE;  EXCLUSIVE 
AND  JEALOUS  SPIRIT  J  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  CHINESE  J  FORMAL- 
ISM J  LAO-TSZE  AND  KHUNG-TSZE  (CONFUCIUS)  ;  EDUCATION  AMONG 
OTHER  PEOPLE  OF  THE  EAST ;  THE  EGYPTIANS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  J 
ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


1 .  PRELIMINARY  CONSIDERATIONS.  —  A  German  historian  of 
philosophy  begins  his  work  by  asking  this  question:  "  AVtis 
Adam  a  philosopher?"  In  the  same  way  certain  historians 
of  pedagogy  begin  by  learned  researches  upon  the  education 
of  savages.  "We  shall  not  carry  our  investigations  so  far 
back.  Doubtless  from  the  day  when  a  human  family  began 
its  existence,  from  the  day  when  a  father  and  a  mother  began 
to  love  their  children,  education  had  an  existence.  But  there 
is  very  little  practical  interest  in  studying  these  obscure  be- 
ginnings of  pedagogy.  It  is  a  matter  of  erudition  and  curi- 


2  THE   HISTOKY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

osity.1  Besides  the  difficulty  of  gathering  up  the  faint  traces 
of  primitive  education,  there  would  be  but  little  profit  in 
painfully  following  the  slow  gropings  of  primeval  man.  In 
truth,  the  history  of  pedagogy  dates  but  from  the  period 
relatively  recent,  when  human  thought,  in  the  matter  of  edu- 
cation, substituted  reflection  for  instinct,  art  for  blind  nature. 
So  we  shall  hasten  to  begin  the  study  of  pedagogy  among 
the  classical  peoples,  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  after  hav- 
ing thrown  a  rapid  glance  over  some  Eastern  nations  consid- 
ered either  in  their  birthplace  and  remote  origin,  or  in  their 
more  recent  development. 

2.  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  HINDOOS.  —  It  would  not  be 
worth  our  while  to  enter  into  details  respecting  a  civilization 
so  different  from  our  own  as  that  of  the  Hindoos.     But  we 
should  not  forget  that  we  are  in  part  the  descendants  of  that 
people,  and  that  we  belong  to  the  same  ethnic  group,  and 
that  the  European  languages  are  derived  from  theirs. 

3.  POLITICAL  CASTE   AND   RELIGIOUS   PANTHEISM.  —  The 
!    spirit  of  caste,  from  the  social  point  of  view,  and  pantheism, 

from  the  religious  point  of  view,  are  the  characteristics  of 
Hindoo  society.  The  Indian  castes  constituted  hereditary 


1  A  knowledge  of  the  mental  and  moral  condition  of  savages  serves  the 
invaluable  purpose  of  showing  what  education  has  accomplished  for  the 
human  race.  There  would  be  much  less  grumbling  at  the  tax-gatherer  if 
men  could  clearly  conceive  the  condition  of  societies  where  no  taxes  are 
levied.  To  know  what  education  has  actually  done  we  need  to  know  the 
condition  of  societies  unaffected  by  systematic  education.  Such  a  book  as 
Lubbock's  Orifjin  of  Civilization  is  a  helpful  introduction  to  the  history  of 
education.  "Whoever  reads  such  a  book  carefully  will  be  confronted  with 
this  problem:  How  is  it  that  intellectual  inertness,  amounting  almost  to 
stupidity,  is  frequently  the  concomitant  of  an  acute  and  persistent  sense- 
training  ?  Besides,  savage  tribes  are  historical  illustrations  of  what  has 
been  produced  on  a  large  scale  by  "  following  Nature.''  (P.) 


EDUCATION   IN   ANTIQUITY.  3 

classes  where  social  rank  and  special  vocation  were  deter- 
mined, not  by  free  choice,  but  by  the  accident  of  birth.  The 
consequence  of  this  was  an  endless  routine,  with  no  care 
either  for  the  individuality,  or  the  personal  talents,  or  the 
inclination  of  children,  and  without  the  possibility  of  rising 
by  personal  effort  above  one's  rank  in  life.1  On  the  other 
Imnd,  religious  ideas  came  to  restrict,  within  the  limits  where 
it  Avas  already  imprisoned,  the  activity  of  the  young  Hindoo. 
God  is  everywhere  present ;  he  manifests  himself  in  all  the 
phenomena  of  heaven  and  earth,  in  the  sun  and  in  the  stars, 
in  the  Himalayas  and  in  the  Ganges  ;  he  penetrates  and  ani- 
mates everything ;  the  things  of  sense  are  but  the  changing 
and  ephemeral  vestments  of  the  unchangeable  being.  "•  With 
this  pantheistic  conception  of  the  world  and  of  life,  the 
thought  and  the  will  of  the  Hindoo  perished  in  the  mystic 
contemplation  of  the  soul.  To  become  master  of  one's  in- 
clinations ;  to  abandon  every  terrestrial  thought ;  after  this 
life  to  lose  one's  identity,  and  to  be  annihilated  by  absorp- 
tion in  the  divine  nature  ;  to  prepare  one's  self  by  macera- 
tions and  expiations  for  complete  submersion  in  the  original 
principle  of  all  being,  —  this  is  the  highest  wisdom,  the  true 
happiness  of  the  Hindoo,  the  ideal  of  all  serious  education."2 


1  There  is  an  argument  for  caste  in  the  modern  fiction  of  a  "  beautiful 
economy  of  Nature,"  which  plants  human  beings  in  society  as  it  does  trees 
in  the  earth,  and  thus  makes  education  consist  in  the  action  of  environment 
upon  man  and  in  the  reaction  of  man  upon  his  environment.  To  support 
existence,  man  needs  certain  endowments;  but  the  force  of  circumstances 
creates  these  very  endowments.  One  man  is  predestined  to  be  a  Red 
Indian,  another  a  Bushman,  and  still  another  an  accountant;  and  in  each 
case  the  function  of  education  is  to  adapt  the  man  to  the  place  where 
Nature  has  fixed  him.  This  modern  justification  of  caste  is  adroitly 
worked  out  by  Mr.  Spencer  in  the  first  chapter  of  his  Education.  (P.) 

-  Dittes,  Ilistoire  de  I'education  et  de  I'instruction,  translated  by  Redolfi, 
1880,  p.  38. 


4  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

4.  EFFECTS  ON  EDUCATION.  —  It  is  easy  to  predict  what 
education  would  become  under  the  weight  of  these  double 
chains,  social  and  religious.     While  the  ideal  in  our  modern 
societies  is  more  and  more  to  enfranchise  the  individual,  and 
to  create  for  him  personal  freedom  and  self-consciousness, 
the  effort  of   the  Hindoo  Brahmins  consisted  above  all  in 
crushing  out  all  spontaneity,  in  abolishing  individual  predi- 
lections, by  preaching  the  doctrine  of  absolute  self-renuncia- 
tion,  of   voluntary   abasement,  and   of   contempt   for   life. 
Man  was  thus  l>orn  doubly  a  slave,  —  by  his  social  condition, 
which  predestinated  him  to  the  routine  apprenticeship  of  his 
ancestral  caste,  and  by  his  mysterious  dependence  on  the 
divine  being  who  absorbed  in  himself  all  real  activity,  and 
left  to  human  beings  only  the  deceptive  and  frail  appearance 
of  it. 

5.  BUDDHIST  REFORM. — The  Buddhist  reform,  which  so 
profoundly  affected  Brahmanism  at  about  the  sixth  century 
B.C.,  did  not  sensibly  modify,  from  the  educational  point  of 
view,  the  ideas  of  the  Hindoos.     Buddha  also  taught  that 
the  cause  of  evil  resides  in  the  passions  of  men,  and  that  in 
order  to  attain  moral  peace,  there  is  no  other  means  to  be 
employed  than  that  of  self-abnegation  and  of  the  renounce- 
ment of  everything  selfish  and  personal. 

6.  CONVERSATION  OF  BUDDHA  AND  PURNA.  —  One  of  the 
traditions  which  permit  us  the  better  to  appreciate  the  origi- 
nal character,  at  once  affecting  and  ingenuous,   of  Indian 
thought,   is  the  conversation   of   Buddha  with   his  disciple 
Purna  about  a  journey  the   latter  was  going  to  undertake  to 
the  barbarians   for  the  purpose  of  teaching  them  the  new 
religion  :  — 

"They  are  men,"  said  Buddha,  "  who  are  fiery  in  temper, 
passionate,  cruel,  furious,  insolent.     If  they  openly  address 


EDUCATION    IN    ANTIQUITY.  6 

you  in  words  which  are  malicious  and  coarse,  and  become 
angry  with  you,  what  will  you  think?" 

"  If  they  address  me  to  my  face  in  coarse  and  insolent 
terms,  this  is  what  I  shall  think :  they  are  certainly  good 
men  who  openly  address  me  in  malicious  terms,  but  they  will 
neither  strike  me  with  their  hands  nor  stone  me." 

"  But  should  they  strike  you  with  their  hands  and  stone 
you,  what  will  you  think?" 

"  I  shall  think  that  they  are  good  men,  gentle  men,  who 
strike  me  with  their  hands  and  stone  me,  but  do  not  beat  me 
with  a  club  nor  with  a  sword." 

"  But  if  they  beat  you  with  a  club  and  with  a  sword?" 

"They  are  good  men,  gentle  men,  who  beat  me  with  a 
chili  and  with  a  sword,  but  they  do  not  completely  kill  me." 

"  But  if  they  were  really  to  kill  you?  " 

"  They  are  good  men,  gentle  men,  who  deliver  me  with  so 
little  pain  from  this  body  encumbered  with  defilements." 

"Very  good,  Purna !  You  may  live  in  the  country  of 
those  barbarians.  Go,  Purna !  Being  liberated,  liberate ; 
being  consoled,  console  ;  having  reached  Nirvana  thus  made 
perfect,  cause  others  to  go  there."  l 

Whatever  there  is  to  admire  in  such  a  strange  system  of 
morals  should  not  blind  us  to  the  vices  which  resulted  from       Oy 
its    practical  consequences :    such  as  the  abuse  of   passive  * 
resignation,  the  complete  absence  of  the  idea  of  right  and  of 
justice,  and  no  active  virtues. 

7.  EFFECTS  ON  EDUCATION.  —  Little  is  known  of  the 
actual  state  of  educational  practice  among  the  Hindoos.  It 
may  be  said,  however,  that  the  Brahmins,  the  priests,  had 
the  exclusive  charge  of  education.  Woman,  in  absolute 
subjection  to  man,  had  no  share  whatever  in  instruction. 

,  Introduction  a  I'histoire  du  Uouddhisme,  p.  252. 


6  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

As  to  boys,  it  seems  that  in  India  there  were  always 
schools  for  their  benefit;  schools  which  were  held  in  the 
open  country  under  the  shade  of  trees,  or,  in  case  of  bad 
weather,  under  sheds.  Mutual  instruction  has  been  prac- 
tised in  India  from  the  remotest  antiquity ;  it  is  from  here, 
in  fact,  that  Andrew  Bell,  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  borrowed  the  idea  of  this  mode  of  instruction. 
Exercises  in  writing  were  performed  first  upon  the  sand  with 
a  stick,  then  upon  palm  leaves  with  an  iron  style,  and 
finally  upon  the  dry  leaves  of  the  plane-tree  with  ink.  In 
discipline  there  was  a  resort  to  corporal  punishment :  besides 
the  rod  the  teacher  employed  other  original  means  of  correc- 
tion ;  for  example,  he  threw  cold  water  on  the  offender. 
The  teacher,  moreover,  was  treated  with  a  religious  respect ; 
the  child  must  respect  him  as  he  would  Buddha  himself. 

The  higher  studies  were  reserved  for  the  priestly  class, 
who,  long  before  the  Christian  era,  successfully  cultivated 
rhetoric  and  logic,  astronomy  and  the  mathematics. 

8.  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  ISRAELITES.  —  "If  ever  a  peo- 
ple has  demonstrated  the  power  of  education,  it  is  the  people 
of  Israel."1  In  fact,  what  a  singular  spectacle  is  offered  us 
by  that  people,  which,  dispossessed  of  its  own  country  for 
eighteen  hundred  years,  has  been  dispersed  among  the 
nations  without  losing^  its  identity,  and  has  maintained  its 
existence  without  a  povmtrv.  without  a  government,  and 
without  a  ruler,  preserving  with'  perennial  energy  its  habits, 
its  manners,  and  its  faith  !  Without  losing  sight  of  the  part 
of  that  extraordinary  vitality  of  the  Jewish  people,  which  is 
due  to  the  natural  endowments  of  the  race,  its  tenacity  of 
temperament,  and  its  wonderful  activity  of  intelligence,  it  is 
just  to  attribute  another  part  of  it  to  the  sound  education, 

i  Dittes,  p.  49. 


EDUCATION   IN   ANTIQUITY.  7 

at  once  religious  and  national,  which  the  ancient  Hebrews 
have  transmitted  by  tradition  to  their  descendants. 

9.  EDUCATION,  RELIGIOUS  AND  NATIONAL,  DURING  THE 
PRIMITIVE  PERIOD.  —  The  chief  characteristic  of  the  educa- 
tion of  the  Hebrews  in  the  earliest  period  of  their  history  is 
that  it  was  essentially  domestic.  During  the  whole  Biblical 
period  there  is  no  trace  of  public  schools,  at  least  for  young 
children.  Family  life  is  the  origin  of  that  primitive  society 
where  the  notion  of  the  state  is  almost  unknown,  and  where 
God  is  the  real  king. 

The  child  was  to  become  the  faithful  servant  of  Jehovah. 
To  this  end  it  was  not  needful  that  he  should  be  learned. 
It  was  only  necessary  that  he  should  learn  through  language 
and  the  instructive  example  of  his  parents  the  moral  precepts 

and  the  religious  beliefs  of  the  nation.      It  has  been  very 

L/TH  •*"" 

justly  said1  that^i^mong  all  nations  the  direction  impressed 

on  education  depends  on  the  idea  which  they  form  of  the 
perfect  man.  Among  the  Romans  it  is  the  brave  soldier, 
inured  to  fatigue,  and  readily  yielding  to  discipline  ;  among 
the  Athenians  it  is  the  man  who  unites  in  himself  the  happy 
harmony  of  moral  and  physical  perfection ;  among  the 
Hebrews  the  perfect  man  is  the  pious,  virtuous  man,  who  is 
capable  of  attaining  the  ideal  traced  by  God  himself  in  these 
terms :  '  Ye  shall  be  holy,  for  I  the  Lord  your  God  am 
holy!  "7  J-,  5': 

The  discipline  was  harsh,  as  is  proved  by  many  passages 
in  the  Bible :  "  He  that  spareth  his  rod,  hateth  his  son,"  say 
the  Proverbs ;  "  but  he  that  loveth  him  chasteneth  him 
betimes."3  "  Withhold  not  correction  from  the  child,  for  if 


1 L' education  et  I'instruction  chez  les  anciens  Juifs,  by  J.  Simon,  Paris, 
1879,  p.  16. 

3  Levit.  xix.  2.  8  Prov.  xiii.  24. 


8  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

thou  beatest  him  with  the  rod,  he  shall  not  die.  Thou  shalt 
beat  him  with  the  rod,  and  shalt  deliver  his  soul  from  hell."  1 
And  still  more  significant :  ' '  Chasten  thy  son  while  there  is 
hope,  and  let  not  thy  soul  spare  for  his  crying."2 

Only  boys,  it  seems,  learned  to  read  and  write.  As  to 
girls,  they  were  taught  to  spin,  to  weave,  to  prepare  food  for 
the  table,  to  superintend  the  work  of  the  household,  and 
also  to  sing  and  to  dance. 

In  a  word,  intellectual  culture  was  but  an  incident  in  the 
primitive  education  of  the  Hebrews  ;  the  great  thing,  in  their 
eyes,  was  moral  and  religious  instruction,  and  education  in 
love  of  country.  Fathers  taught  their  children  the  nation's 
history,  and  the  great  events  that  had  marked  the  destiny 
of  the  people  of  God.  That  series  of  events  celebrated 
by  the  great  feasts  which  were  often  renewed,  and  in  which 
the  children  participated,  served  at  once  to  fill  their  hearts 
with  gratitude  to  God  and  with  love  for  their  country. 

10.  PROGRESS  OF  POPULAR  INSTRUCTION.  —  It  is  not  easy 
to  conceive  to  what  extent  the  zeal  for  instruction  was  devel- 
oped among  the  ancient  Jews  in  the  years  that  followed  the 
advent  of  Christianity.  From  being  domestic,  as  it  had  been 
up  to  that  time,  Jewish  education  became  public.  Besides, 
it  was  no  longer  sufficient  to  indoctrinate  children  with  good 
principles  and  wholesome  moral  habits  ;  they  must  also  be 
instructed.  From  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era. 
the  Israelites  approached  our  modern  ideal,  with  respect  to 
making  education  obligatory  and  universal.  Like  every 
brave  nation  that  has  been  vanquished,  whose  energy  has 
survived  defeat,  like  the  Prussians  after  Jena,  or  the 
French  after  1870,  the  Jews  sought  to  defend  themselves 
against  the  effects  of  conquest  by  a  great  intellectual  effort, 

i  Prov.  xxiii.  13,  14.  2  Prov.  xix.  18. 


EDUCATION   IN   ANTIQUITY.  9 

and  to  regain  their  lost  ground  by  the  development  of  popu- 
lar instruction. 

11.  ORGANIZATION   OF    SCHOOLS. — In   the   year  64,    the 
high  priest,  Joshua  Ben  Gamala,   imposed   on   each  town, 
under  pain  of  excommunication,  the  obligation  to  support  a 
school.     If  the  town  is  cut  in  two  by  a  river,  and  there  is 
no  means  of  transit  by  a  sale  bridge,  a  school  must  be  estab- 
lished on  each  side.      Even  to-day  we  are  far  from  having 
realized,  as  regards  the  number  of  schools  and  of  teachers, 
this  rule  stated  in  the  Talmud:    If  the  number  of  children 
does  not  exceed  twenty-five,  the  school  shall  be  conducted 
by  a  single  teacher ;    for  more  than  twenty -five,  the  town 
shall  employ  an    assistant ;    if   the   number  exceeds  forty, 
there  shall  be  two  masters. 

12.  RESPECT  FOR  TEACHERS. — In  that  ancient  time,  what 
an   exalted   and    noble    conception   men    had   of    teachers, 
"  those  true  guardians  of  the  city"  !     Even  then,  how  exact- 
ing were  the  requirements  made  of  them  !     But,  on  the  other 
hand,  how  they  were  esteemed  and  respected  !     The  Rabbins 
required   that   the    schoolmaster  should   be   married ;    the}* 
mistrusted  teachers  who  were  not  at  the  same  time  heads  of 
families.     Is  it  possible  to  enforce  the  advantages  of  matu- 
rity and  experience  more  delicately  than  in  this  beautiful 
language?  "  He  who  learns  of  a  young  master  is  like  a  man 
who  eats   green    grapes,   and   drinks  wine  fresh   from   the 
press  ;  but  he  who  has  a  master  of  mature  years  is  like  a 
man  who  eats  ripe  and  delicious   grapes,   and   drinks   old 
wine."      Mildness,  patience,  and  unselfishness  were  recom- 
mended as   the  ruling  virtues  of  the  teacher.      ' '  If   your 
teacher  and  your  father,"  says  the  Talmud,  "  have  need  of 
your    assistance,    help   your    teacher   before    helping    your 
father,  for  the  latter  has  given   you  only  the  life  of  this 


10  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

world,  while  the  former  has  secured  for  you  the  life  of  the 
world  to  coine."  l 

13.  METHOD  AND  DISCIPLINE.  —  The  child  entered  school 
at  the  age  of  six.  "  If  a  child  below  the  age  of  six  is 
brought  to  your  school,"  sa^-s  the  Talmud,  "you  need  not 
receive  him  "  ;  and  to  indicate  that  after  that  age  it  is  proper 
to  regain  the  lost  time,  the  Talmud  adds,  "  After  the  age  of 
six,  receive  the  child,  and  load  him  like  an  ox."  On  the 
contrary,  other  authorities  of  the  same  period,  more  judicious 
and  far-seeing,  recommend  moderation  in  tasks,  and  say 
that  it  is  necessary  to  treat  "the  young  according  to  their 
strength,  and  the  grown-up  according  to  theirs." 

There  was  taught  in  the  Jewish  schools,  along  with  reading 
and  writing,2  a  little  of  natural  history,  and  a  great  deal  of 
geometry  and  astronomy.  Naturally,  the  Bible  was  the  first 
book  put  in  the  hands  of  children.  The  master  interspersed 
moral  lessons  with  the  teaching  of  reading.  He  made  a 
special  effort  to  secure  a  correct  pronunciation,  and  multi- 
plied his  explanations  in  order  to  make  sure  of  being  under- 
stood, repeating  his  comments  even  to  the  four-hundredth 
time  if  it  were  necessary.  It  seems  that  the  methods  wore 
suggestive  and  attractive,  and  the  discipline  relatively  mild. 
There  were  but  few  marks  of  the  proverbial  severity  of  the 
ancient  times.  "Children,"  says  the  Talmud,  "should  be 
punished  with  one  hand,  and  caressed  with  two."  The 
Christian  spirit,  the  spirit  of  him  who  had  said  "  suffer  the 

1  On  similar  grounds,  Alexander  declared  that  he  owed  more  to  Aristotle 
his  teacher,  than  to  Philip  his  father.     (P.) 

2  What  were  the  methods  followed  in  teaching  reading  and  writing? 
We  are  told  hy  Renan  in  his  Vie  de  Jtsus  that  "  Jesus  doubtless  learned  to 
read  and  write  according  to  the  method  of  the  East,  which  consists  in 
putting  into  the  hands  of  the  child  a  book  which  he  repeats  in  concert  with 
his  comrades  till  he  knows  it  by  heart." 


EDUCATION   IN    ANTMJUITY.  11 

little  children  to  come  unto  me,"  had  affected  the  Jews  them- 
selves. However,  corporal  punishment  was  tolerated  to  a 
certain  extent,  but,  strange  to  sa}-,  only  for  children  above 
the  age  of  eleven.  In  case  of  disobedience,  a  pupil  above 
that  age  might  be  deprived  of  food,  and  even  struck  with  a 
strap  of  shoe-leather. 

14.  EXCLUSIVE  AND  JEALOUS  SPIRIT.  —  Some  reservation 
must  accompany  the  encomiums  justly  due  Jewish  education. 
With  respect  to  the  rest  of  the  human  race,  the  Jewish  spirit 
was  mean,  narrow,  and  malevolent.     The  Israelites  of  this 
day  have  retained  something  of  these  jealous  and  exclusive 
tendencies.    At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  the  fierce 
and  haughty  patriotism  of  the  Jews  led  them  to  proscribe 
whatever    was    of  Gentile    origin,    whatever    had    not    the 
sanction  of  the   national  tradition.      Nothing  of  Greek  or 
Roman  culture  penetrated  this  closed  world.1     The  Jewish 
doctors  covered  with   the   same  contempt  him  who  raises 
hogs  and  him  who  teaches  his  son  Greek  science. 

15.  EDUCATION    AMONG    THE    CHINESE. — We    have   at- 
tempted  to   throw   into  relief   the  educational  practices  of 
two    Eastern    nations    to    which    the    civilization    of    the 
West   is   most   intimately  related.     A  few  words  will   suf- 
fice for   the   other  primitive  societies  whose  history  is  too 
little   known,    and  whose  civilization    is   too   remote    from 
our  own,  to  make  their  plans  of  education  anything  more 
than   an  object   of   curiosity. 

1  This  statement  needs  qualifying.  "In  nearly  all  the  families  of  high 
rank,"  says  the  Dictioiinaire  de  Pedac/oyie  (lere  Partie,  Article  JUIFS),  the 
daughters  spoke  Greek.  The  Rabbins  did  not  look  with  any  favor  upon 
the  study  of  profane  philosophy;  but  notwithstanding  their  protests,  there 
were  many  devoted  readers  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  It  is  said  that  among 
the  pupils  of  the  celebrated  Gamaliel  there  were  five  hundred  who  studied 
the  philosophy  and  the  literature  of  Greece."  (P.) 


12  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

China  has  been  civilized  from  time  immemorial,  and  at 
every  period  of  her  long  history  she  has  preserved  her 
national  characteristics.  For  more  than  three  thousand 
years  an  absolute  uniformity  has  characterized  this  immo- 
bile people.  Everything  is  regulated  by  tradition.  Edu- 
cation is  mechanical  and  formal.  The  preoccupation  of 
teachers  is  to  cause  their  pupils  to  acquire  a  mechanical 
ability,  a  regular  and  sure  routine.  They  care  more  for 
appearances,  for  a  decorous  manner  of  conduct,  than  for 
a  searching  and  profound  morality.  Life  is  but  a  cere- 
monial, minutely  determined  and  punctually  followed. 
There  is  no  liberty,  no  glow  of  spontaneity.  Their  art 
is  characterized  by  conventional  refinement  and  by  a 
prettiuess  that  seems  mean  ;  there  is  nothing  of  the  grand 
and  imposing.  By  their  formalism,  the  Chinese  educa- 
tors are  the  Jesuits  of  the  East. 

16.  LAO-TSZE  AND  KHUNG-TSZE.  — Towards  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.C.  two  reformers  appeared  in  China,  Lao-tsze  and 
Khung-tsze.  The  first  represents  the  spirit  of  emancipa- 
tion, of  progress,  of  the  pursuit  of  the  ideal,  of  protest 
against  routine.  He  failed.  The  second,  on  the  contrary, 
who  became  celebrated  under  the  name  of  Confucius,  and 
to  whom  tradition  ascribes  more  than  three  thousand 
personal  disciples,  secured  the  triumph  of  his  ideas  of 
practical,  utilitarian  morality,  founded  upon  the  authority 
of  the  State  and  that  of  the  family,  as  well  as  upon  the 
interest  of  the  individual. 

A  quotation  from  Lao-tsze  will  prove  that  human 
thought,  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  had  reached  a  high 
mark  in  China  :  — 

"  Certain  bad  rulers  would  have  us  believe  that  the 
heart  and  the  spirit  of  man  should  be  left  empty,  but 


EDUCATION   IN    ANTIQUITY.  13 

that  instead  his  stomach  should  be  filled ;  that  his  bones 
should  be  strengthened  rather  than  the  power  of  his  will ; 
that  we  should  always  desire  to  have  the  people  remain 
iu  a  state  of  ignorance,  for  then  their  demands  would 
be  few.  It  is  difficult,  they  say,  to  govern  a  people  that 
are  too  wise. 

"These  doctrines  are  directly  opposed  to  what  is  due 
to  humanity.  Those  in  authority  should  come  to  the  aid 
of  the  people  by  means  of  oral  and  written  instruction ; 
so  far  from  oppressing  them  and  treating  them  as  slaves, 
they  should  do  them  good  in  every  possible  way." 

In  other  words,  it  is  by  enlightening  the  people,  and 
by  an  honest  devotion  to  their  interests,  that  one  be- 
comes worthy  to  govern  them. 

If  the  Chinese  have  not  fully  profited  by  these  wise  and 
exalted  counsels,  it  appears  that  at  least  they  have  at- 
tempted to  make  instruction  general.  Hue,  a  Chinese  \ 
missionary,  boldly  declares  that  China  is  the  country  of 
all  countries  where  primary  instruction  is  most  widely  dif- 
fused. To  the  same  effect,  a  German  writer  affirms  that 
in  China  there  is  not  a  village  so  miserable,  nor  a  ham- 
let so  unpretending,  as  not  to  be  provided  with  a  school 
of  some  kind.1  In  a  country  of  tradition,  like  China, 
we  can  infer  what  once  existed  from  what  exists  to-day. 
But  that  instruction  which  is  so  widely  diffused  is  wholly 
superficial  and  tends  merely  to  an  exterior  culture.  As 
Dittes  says,  the  educational  method  of  the  Chinese  con- 
sists, not  in  developing,  but  in  communicating.1 


1  For  a  series  of  interesting  documents  on  the  actual  state  of  education 
in  China,  consult  the  article  CHINE,  in  Buisson's  Dictionnaire  de  Pe'd- 
agoyie. 

2  Dittes,  op.  cit.,  p.  32. 


14  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

17.  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  OTHER  NATIONS  OF  THE 
EAST.  —  Of  all  the  oriental  nations,  Egypt  is  the  one  in 
which  intellectual  culture  seems  to  have  reached  the  high- 
est point,  but  only  among  men  of  a  privileged  class. 
Here,  as  in  India,  the  priestly  class  monopolized  the 
learning  of  the  day ;  it  jealously  guarded  the  depository 
of  mysterious  knowledge  which  it  communicated  only  to 
the  kings.  The  common  people,  divided  into  working 
classes,  which  were  destined  from  father  to  son  to  the 
same  social  status,  learned  scarcely  more  than  was  nec- 
essary in  order  to  practise  their  hereditary  trades  and 
to  be  initiated  into  the  religious  beliefs. 

In  the  more  military  but  less  theocratic  nation,  the 
Persian,  efforts  were  made  in  favor  of  a  general  edu- 
cation. The  religious  dualism  which  distinguished  Ormuzd, 
the  principle-  of  good,  from  Ahriman,  the  principle  of 
evil,  and  which  promised  the  victory  to  the  former,  made 
it  the  duty  of  each  man  to  contribute  to  this  final  vic- 
tory by  devoting  himself  to  a  life  of  virtue.  Hence  arose 
noble  efforts  to  attain  physical  and  moral  perfection.  The 
education  of  the  Persians  in  temperance  and  frugality  has 
excited  the  admiration  of  certain  Greek  writers,  especially 
Xenophon,  and  there  will  be  found  in  his  Cyropcedia  a  thrill- 
ing picture  of  the  brave  and  noble  manners  of  the  ancient 
Persians.1 

/  l  On  a  recent  occasion  Archdeacon  Farrar  referred  to  Persian  edu- 
cation as  follows  :  "  AVe  boast  of  our  educational  ideal.  Is  it  nearly 
as  high  in  some  essentials  as  that  even  of  some  ancient  and  heathen 
nations  long  centuries  before  Christ  came?  The  ancient  Persians  were 
worshippers  of  fire  and  of  the  sun  ;  most  of  their  children  would  have 
been  probably  unable  to  pass  the  most  elementary  examination  in 
physiology,  but  assuredly  the  Persian  ideal  might  be  worthy  of  our 
study.  (At  the  age  of  fourteen  —  the  age  when  we  turn  our  children 
adrift  from  school,  and  do  nothing  more  for  them  —  the  Persians  gave 


EDUCATION   IN   ANTIQUITY.  15 

On  the  whole,  the  history  of  pedagogy  among  the  people  of 
the  East  offers  us  but  few  examples  to  follow.  That  which, 
in  different  degrees,  characterizes  primitive  education  is  that 
it  is  the  privilege  of  certain  classes  ;  that  woman  is  most  gen- 
erally excluded  from  its  benefits  ;  that  in  respect  of  the  com- 
mon people  it  is  scarcely  more  than  the  question  of  an 
apprenticeship  to  a  trade,  or  of  the  art  of  war,  or  of  a 
preparation  for  the  future  life  ;  that  no  appeal  is  made  to 
the  free  energy  of  individuals,  but  that  the  great  masses  of 
the  people  in  antiquity  have  generally  lived  under  the  har- 
assing oppression  of  religious  conceptions,  of  fixed  tradi- 
tions, and  of  political  despotism. 

[18.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  Speaking  generally,  the  edu- 
cation of  the  primitive  nations  of  the  East  had  the  following 
characteristics  :  — 

1 .  It  was  administered  by  the  hieratic  class.     This  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  priests  were  the  only  men  of  learn- 
ing, and  consequently  the  only  men  who  could  teach. 

2.  The  knowledge  communicated  was  in  the  main  relig-    | 
ions,  ethical,  and  prudential,  and  the  final  purpose  of  instruc- 
tion was  good  conduct. 

3.  As  the  matter  of  instruction  was  knowledge  bearing 
the  sanction  of  authority,  the  learner  was  debarred  from  free 
inquiry,  and  the  general  tendency  was  towards  immobility. 

4.  As  the  knowledge  of  the  day  was  embodied  in  lan- 
guage, the  process  of  learning  consisted  in  the  interpretation 
of  speech,  and  so  involved  a  large  and  constant  use  of  the 

their  young  nobles  the  four  best  masters  whom  they  could  find  to 
teach  their  boys  wisdom,  justice,  temperance,  and  courage  —  wisdom 
including  worship,  justice  including  the  duty  of  unswerving  truthful- 
ness through  life,  temperance  including  mastery  over  sensual  tempta- 
tions, courage  including  a  free  mind  opposed  to  all  things  coupled 
with  guilt.'1  (P.) 


*Eg 


16  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

memory ;   and  this  literal  memorizing  of  the  principles  and 
rules  of  conduct  promoted  stability  of  character. 

5.  As  the  purpose  of  instruction  was  guidance,  there  was 
no  appearance  of  the  conception  that  one  main  purpose  of 
education  is  discipline  or  culture. 

6.  The  conception  of  education  as   a  means  of  national 
regeneration  had  a  distinct  appearance  among  the  Jews  ;  and 
among  this  people  we    find  one  form  of  compulsion,  —  the 
obligation  placed  on  towns  to  support  schools. 

7.  In  Persia,  the  State  appears  for  the  first  time  as  a  dis- 
tinct agency  in  promoting  education. 

8.  In  China,  from  time  immemorial,  scholarship  has  been 
made  the  condition  for  obtaining  places  in  the  civil  service, 
and  in  consequence  education  has  been  made  subordinate  to 
examinations. 

9.  Save  to  a  limited  extent  among  the  Jews,  woman  was 
debarred  from  the  privileges  of  education. 

10.  In   the  main,  education  was   administered  so  as   to 
perpetuate  class  distinctions.     There  was  no  appearance  of 
the    conception    that    education  is  a  universal  right  and  a 
universal  good.] 


CHAPTER   II. 

EDUCATION   AMONG   THE   GREEKS. 

GREEK  PEDAGOGY;  ATHENIAN*  AND  SPARTAN  EDUCATION;  THE  SCHOOLS 
OF  ATHENS;  SCHOOLS  OF  GRAMMAR;  SCHOOLS  OF  GYMNASTICS;  THE 
PALESTRA  ;  SCHOOLS  OF  MUSIC  J  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  RHETORIC  AND  OF 
PHILOSOPHY;  SOCRATES  AND  THE  SOCRATIC  METHOD;  SOCRATIC 
IRONY  ;  MAIEUTICS,  OR  THE  ART  OF  GIVING  BIRTH  TO  IDEAS  J 
EXAMPLES  OF  IRONY  AND  OF  MAIECTICS  BORROWED  FROM  THE 
MEMORABILIA  OF  XENOPHON  J  PLATO  AND  THE  REPUBLIC  ;  THE  EDU- 
CATION OF  WARRIORS  AND  MAGISTRATES  J  MUSIC  AND  GYMNASTICS  J 
RELIGION  AND  ART  IN  EDUCATION;  THE  BEAUTIFUL  AND  THE  GOOD  ; 
HIGH  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION;  THE  LAWS;  DEFINITION  OF  EDUCA- 
TION J  DETAILED  PRECEPTS  J  XENOPHON  ;  THE  ECONOMICS  AND  THE 
r.nucATiON  OF  WOMAN;  THE  CYROP^DIA;  PROTESTS  OF  XENOPHON 
AGAINST  THE  DEGENERATE  MANNERS  OF  THE  GREEKS  ;  ARISTOTLE  J 
GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  HIS  PLAN  OF  EDUCATION  ;  PUBLIC  EDUCA 
TION  ;  PROGRESSIVE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HUMAN  NATURE  J  PHYSICAL 
EDUCATION;  INTELLECTUAL  AND  MORAL  EDUCATION;  DEFECTS  IN 
THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  ARISTOTLE,  AND  IN  GREEK  PEDAGOGY  IN  GEN- 
ERAL; ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


19.  GREEK  PEDAGOGY.  —  Upon  that  privileged  soil  of 
Greece,  in  that  brilliant  Athens  abounding  in  artists,  poets, 
historians,  and  philosophers,  in  that  rude  Sparta  celebrated 
for  its  discipline  and  manly  virtues,  education  was  rather  the 
spontaneous  fruit  of  nature,  the  natural  product  of  diverse 
manners,  characters,  and  races,  than  the  premeditated  result 
of  a  reflective  movement  of  the  human  will.  Greece,  how- 
ever, had  its  pedagogy,  because  it  had  its  legislators  and  its 
philosophers,  the  first  directing  education  in  its  practical 
details,  the  second  making  theoretical  inquiries  into  the 
essential  principles  underlying  the  development  of  the  human 


18  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

soul.  In  respect  of  education,  as  of  everything  else,  the 
higher  spiritual  life  of  modern  nations  has  been  developed 
under  the  influence  of  Grecian  antiquity.1 

20.  ATHENIAN  AND  SPARTAN  EDUCATION.  —  In  the  specta- 
cle presented  to  us  by  ancient  Greece,  the  first  fact  that 
strikes  us  by  its  contrast  with  the  immobility  and  unity  of 
the  primitive  societies  of  the  East,  is  a  freer  unfolding  of  the 
human  faculties,  and  consequently  a  diversity  in  tendencies 
and  manners.  Doubtless,  in  the  Greek  republics,  the  indi- 
vidual is  always  subordinate  to  the  State.  Even  in  Athens, 
little  regard  is  paid  to  the  essential  dignity  of  the  human 
person.  But  the  Athenian  State  differs  profoundly  from  the 
Spartan,  and  consequently  the  individual  life  is  differently 
understood  and  differently  directed  in  these  Jwo  great  cities. 
At  Athens,  while  not  neglecting  the  body,  the  chief  preoccu- 
pation is  the  training  of  the  mind;  intellectual  culture  is 
pushed  to  an  extreme,  even  to  over-refinement ;  there  is 
such  a  taste  for  fine  speaking  that  it  develops  an  abuse  of 
language  and  reasoning  which  merits  the  disreputable  name 
of  sophistry.  At  Sparta,  mind  is  sacrificed  to  body  ;  physi- 
cal strength  and  military  skill  are  the  qualities  most  desired ; 
the  sole  care  is  the  training  of  athletes  and  soldiers.  Sobriety 
and  courage  are  the  results  of  this  one-sided  education,  but 
so  are  ignorance  and  brutalityJ.  Montaigne  has  thrown  into 
relief,  not  without  some  partiality  for  Sparta,  these  two  con- 
trasted plans  of  education. 

"  Men  went  to  the  other  cities  of  Greece,"  he  says.  "  to 
find  rhetoricians,  painters,  and  musicians,  but  to  Lacedre- 
mon  for  legislators,  magistrates,  and  captains  ;  at  Athens 
fine  speaking  was  taught ;  but  here,  brave  acting  :  there,  one 

1  Upon  this  subject  consult  the  excellent  study  of  Alexander  Martin,  en- 
titled Les  Doctrines  Pedagogiques  des  Grecs.  Paris,  1881. 


EDUCATION    AMONG    THE    GREEKS.  19 

learned  to  unravel  a  sophistical  argument  and  to  abate  the 
imposture  of  insidiously  twisted  words  ;  here,  to  extricate 
one's  self  from  the  enticements  of  pleasure  and  to  overcome 
the  menaces  of  fortune  and  death  by  a  manly  courage.  The 
Athenians  busied  themselves  with  words,  but  the  Spartans 
with  things  ;  with  the  former,  there  was  a  continual  activity  of 
the  tongue  ;  with  the  latter,  a  continual  activity  of  the  soul." l 
The  last  remark  is  nutjujst.  The  daily  exercises  of  the 
young  Spartans,  —  jumping,  running,  wrestling,  playing  with 
lances  and  at  quoits,  —  could  not  be  regarded  as  intellectual 
occupations.  On  the  other  hand,  in  learning  to  talk,  the 
young  Athenians  learned  also  to  feel  and  to  think. 

21.  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  ATHENS.  — The  Athenian  legislator, 
Solon,  had  placed  physical  and  intellectual  training  upon  the 
same  footing.  Children,  he  said,  ought,  above  everything 
else,  to  learn  "  to  swim  and  to  read."  It  seems  that  the 
education  of  the  body  was  the  chief  preoccupation  of  the 
Athenian  republic.  While  the  organization  of  schools  for 
grammar  and  music  was  left  to  private  enterprise,  the  State 
took  a  part  in  the  direction  of  the  gymnasia.  The  director 
of  the  gymnasium,  or  the  gymnasiarch,  was  elected  each 
year  by  the  assembly  of  the  people.  Nevertheless,  Athenian 
education  became  more  and  more  a  course  in  literary  train- 
ing, especially  towards  the  sixth  century  B.C. 

The  Athenian  child  remained  in  the  charge  of  a  nurse  and 
an  attendant  up  to  his  sixth  or  seventh  year.  At  the  age  of 
seven,  a  pedagogue,  that  is,  a  "  conductor  of  children," 
usually  a  slave,  was  charged  with  the  oversight  of  the  child. 
Conducted  by  his  pedagogue,  the  pupil  attended  by  turns  the 
school  for  grammar,  the  palestra,2  or  school  for  gymnastics, 

1  Montaigne,  .Essen's,  I.  i.  chap.  xxiv. 

2  The  palestra  was  the  school  of  gymnastics  for  children;  the  yym- 
nasitim  was  set  apart  for  adults  and  grown  men. 


20  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

and  the  school  for  music.  The  grammarian,  who  sometimes 
gave  his  lessons  in  the  open  air,  in  the  streets  and  on  the 
public  squares,  taught  reading,  writing,  and  mythology. 
Homer  was  the  boy's  reading-book.  Instruction  in  gymnas- 
tics was  given  in  connection  with  instruction  in  grammar. 
It  was  begun  in  the  palestra  and  continued  in  the  gymnasium. 
Instruction  in  music  succeeded  the  training  in  grammar  and 
gymnastics.  The  music-master,  or  citharist,  first  taught  his 
pupils  to  sing,  and  then  to  play  upon  the  stringed  instru- 
ments, the  lyre  and  the  cithara.  We  know  what  value  the 
Athenians  attributed  to  music.  Plato  and  Aristotle  agree  in 
thinking  that  the  rhythm  and  harmony  of  music  inspire  the 
soul  with  the  love  of  order,  with  harmoniousuess,  regularity. 
and  a  soothing  of  the  passions.  "We  must  recollect,  more- 
over, that  music  held  a  large  place  in  the  actual  life  of  the 
Greeks.  The  laws  were  promulgated  in  song.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  sing  in  order  to  fulfil  one's  religious  duties.  It  was 
held  that  the  education  of  Themistocles  had  been  neglected 
because  he  had  not  learned  music.  "We  must  regard  the 
Greeks,"  says  Montesquieu,  "•  as  a  race  of  athletes  and 
fighters.  Now  those  exercises,  so  proper  to  make  men  hardy 
and  fierce,  had  need  of  being  tempered  by  others  which  could 
soften  the  manners.  Music,  which  affected  the  soul  through 
the  organs  of  the  body,  was  exactly  adapted  to  this  purpose." l 

In  the  elementary  schools  of  Athens,  at  least  at  the  first, 
the  current  discipline  was  severe.  Aristophanes,  bewailing 
the  degeneracy  of  his  time,  recalls  in  these  terms  the  good 
order  that  reigned  in  the  olden  school :  • — 

"  I  will  relate  what  was  the  ancient  education  in  the  happy 
time  when  I  taught  (it  is  Justice  who  speaks)  and  when 
modesty  was  the  rule.  Then  the  boys  came  out  of  each 

1  Montesquieu,  Esprit  des  lois,  I.  iv.  chap.  vm. 

2  Aristophanes,  Clouds. 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE  GREEKS.  21 

street  with  bare  heads  and  feet,  and,  regardless  of  rain  and 
snow,  went  together  ill  the  most  perfect  order  towards  the 
school  for  music.  There  they  were  seated  quietly  aud 
modestly.  They  were  not  permitted  to  cross  their  legs,  and 
they  learned  some  good  songs.  The  master  sang  the  song 
for  them  slowly  and  with  gravity.  If  some  one  took  a  notion 
to  sing  with  soft  and  studied  inflections,  he  was  severely 
flogged." 

22.    THE    SCHOOLS    OF    RHETORIC    AND    PHILOSOPHY.  — 
Grammar,  gymnastics,  and   music   proper,  represented  the    \ 
elementary  instruction   of   the  young   Athenian.     But   this 
instruction  was  reserved  for  citizens  in  easy  circumstances. 
(The    poor,  aeeordmg-jte— tk«— iatowtieHS—^f—Seiou,  we*e  to  \  1fi* 
learn  only  reading,  swimming,  and  a  trader  ^^The  privilege 
of  instruction  became  still  more  exclusive  in  the  case  of  the 
schools  of  rhetoric  and  philosophy  frequented  by  those  of 
adult  years. 

It  would  be  beside  our  purpose  to  speak  in  this  place  of 
the  courses  in  literature,  or  to  make  known  the  methods  of 
those  teachers  of  rhetoric  who  taught  eloquence  to  all  who 
presented  themselves  for  instruction,  either  in  the  public 
squares  or  in  the  gymnasia.  The  sophists,  those  itinerant 
philosophers  who  went  from  city  to  city  offering  courses  at 
high  rates  of  tuition,  and  teaching  the  art  of  speaking  on 
every  subject,  and  of  making  a  plea  for  error  and  injustice 
just  as  skilfully  as  for  justice  and  truth,  at  the  same  time 
made  illustrious  and  disgraceful  the  teaching  of  eloquence.1 
The  philosophers  were  more  worthy  of  their  task.  Socrates, 

1  The  reputation  of  the  sophists  has  been  considerably  raised  by  Mr. 
Grote  (History  of  Greece,  vol.  VIII.)-  For  an  entertaining  account  of  a 
sophist  of  a  later  age,  see  Pliny's  Letters,  Melmoth's  translation,  Book  II., 
Letter  in.  See  also  Blackie's  Four  Phases  of  Morals,  and  Terrier's  Greek 
Philosophy.  (P.) 


22  THE   HISTORY   OP   PEDAGOGY. 

Plato,  and  Aristotle  were  illustrious  professors  of  ethics. 
Socrates  had  no  regular  school,  but  he  grouped  about  him 
distinguished  young  men  and  initiated  them  into  learning 
and  virtue.  The  Academy  of  Plato  and  the  Lyceum  of  Aris- 
totle were  great  schools  of  philosophy,  real  private  univer- 
sities, each  directed  by  a  single  man.  The  teaching  given 
in  these  schools  has  traversed  the  ages,  and  has  been  pre- 
served in  imperishable  books.  Moreover,  those  illustrious 
spirits  of  Greece  have  transmitted  to  us  either  methods  or 
general  ideas  which  the  history  of  pedagogy  should  reverently 
collect,  as  the  first  serious  efforts  of  human  reflection  on  the 
art  of  education. 

23.  SOCRATES  :  THE  SOCRATIC  METHOD.  —  Socrates  spent 
his  life  in  teaching,  and  in  teaching  according  to  an  original 
method,  which  has  preserved  his  name.  He  had  the  genius 
of  interrogation.  To  question  all  whom  he  met,  either  at  the 
gymnasium  or  in  the  streets  ;  to  question  the  sophists  in  order 
to  convince  them  of  their  errors  and  to  confound  their 
arrogance,  and  presumptuous  young  men  in  order  to  teach 
them  the  truth  of  which  they  were  ignorant ;  to  question 
great  and  small,  statesmen  and  masons,  now  Pericles  and 
now  a  shopkeeper ;  to  question  always  and  everywhere  in 
order  to  compel  every  one  to  form  clear  ideas  ;  such  was  the 
constant  occupation  and  passion  of  his  life.  AVhen  he 
allowed  himself  to  dream  of  the  future  life,  he  said  smilingly 
that  he  hoped  to  continue  in  the  Eh'sian  Fields  the  habits  of 
the  Athenian  Agora,  and  still  to  interrogate  the  shades  of 
the  mighty  dead.  With  Socrates,  conversation  became  an 
art,  and  the  dialogue  a  method.  He  scarcely  ever  employed 
the  didactic  form,  or  that  of  direct  teaching.  He  addressed 
himself  to  his  interlocutor,  urged  him  to  set  forth  his  ideas, 
harassed  him  with  questions  often  somewhat  subtile,  skil- 
fully led  him  to  recognize  the  truth  which  he  himself  had  in 


EDUCATION    AMONG    THE   GREEKS.  23 

mind,  or  the  rather  permitted  him  to  go  off  on  a  false  route 
iu  order  finally  to  discover  to  him  his  error  and  to  sport  with  \ 
his  confusion  ;  and  all  this  with  an  art  of  wonderful  analysis,    i 
with  a  subtilty  of  reasoning  pushed  almost  to  an  extreme, 
and    also   with   a   great   simplicity   of   language,   and   with 
examples  borrowed  from  common  life,  such  as  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  call  intuitive  examples. 

24.  THE  SOCRATIC  IRONY.  —  To  form  an   intelligible  ac- 
count of  the  Socratic  method,  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish 
its  two  essential  phases.     Socrates  followed  a  double  method 
and  sought  a  double  end. 

In  the  first  case,  he  wished  to  make  war  against  error  and 
to  refute  false  opinions.'  Then  he  resorted  to  what  has  been 
called  the  Socratic  irony.1  He  raised  a  question  as  one 
who  simply  desired  to  be  instructed.  If  there  was  the 
statement  of  an  error  in  the  reply  of  the  respondent,  Socra- 
tes made  no  objection  to  it,  but  pretended  to  espouse  the 
ideas  and  sentiments  of  his  interlocutor.  Then,  by  questions 
which  were  adroit  and  sometimes  insidious,  lie  forced  him  to 
develop  his  opinions,  and  to  display,  so  to  speak,  the  whole 
extent  of  his  folly,  and  the  next  instant  slyly  brought  him 
face  to  face  with  the  consequences, which  were  so  absurd  and 
contradictory  that  he  ended  in  losing  confidence,  in  becoming 
involved  in  his  conclusions,  and  finally  in  making  confession 
of  his  errors. 

25.  MAIEUTICS,  OR  THE  ART  OF  GIVING  BIRTH  TO  IDEAS.  — 
Analogous  processes  constituted  the  other  part  of  the  So- 
cratic method,  that  which  he  himself  called  maieutics,  or  the 
art  of  giving  birth  to  ideas. 

1  The  primitive  meaning  of  the  Greek  word  fipcaveia,  irony,  is  interroga- 
tion. Socrates  gave  a  jeering,  ironical  turn  to  his  questions,  and  in  conse- 
quence this  word  lost  its  primary  meaning,  and  took  the  one  which  we 
give  it  at  this  time. 


24  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Socrates  was  convinced  that  the  human  mind  in  its  normal 
condition  discovers  certain  truths  through  its  own  energies, 
provided  one  knows  how  to  lead  it  and  stimulate  it ;  and  so 
he  here  appealed  to  the  spontaneity  of  his  auditor,  to  his 
innate  powers,  and  thus  gently  led  him  on  his  way  by  easy 
transitions  to  the  opinion  which  he  wished  to  make  him 
admit.  However,  he  applied  this  method  only  to  the  search 
for  truths  which  could  either  be  suggested  by  the  intuitions 
of  reason  and  common  sense,  or  determined  by  a  natural 
induction,  that  is,  psychological,  ethical,  and  religious  truths.1 

20.  EXAMPLES  OF  IRONY  AND  MAIEUTICS. — We  can  best 
give  an  exact  idea  of  the  Socratic  method  by  means  of  ex- 
amples. These  examples  are  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of 
the  disciples  of  Socrates,  as  in  the  Dialogues  of  Plato,  such 
as  the  Gorgias,  the  Euthydemus,  etc.,  and  still  better  in  the 
Memorabilia  of  Xeuophou,  where  the  thought  of  the  master 
and  his  manner  of  teaching  are  more  faithfully  reproduced 
than  in  the  bold  and  original  compositions  of  Plato.  While 
recognizing  the  insufficiency  of  these  extracts,  we  shall  here 
make  two  quotations,  in  which  is  displayed  either  his  incisive, 
critical  spirit,  or  his  suggestive  and  fruitful  method:  "  The 
thirty  tyrants  had  put  many  of  the  most  distinguished  citi- 
zens to  death,  and  had  encouraged  others  to  acts  of  injustice. 
'It  would  surprise  me,'  said  Socrates  one  day,  'if  the  keeper 
of  a  flock,  who  had  killed  one  part  of  it  and  had  made  the 

1  The  Socratic  method  for  the  discovery  of  truth  can  be  employed  only 
in  those  cases  where  the  pupil  has  the  crude  materials  of  the  new  knowl- 
edge actually  in  store.  Psychology,  logic,  ethics,  mathematics,  and  per- 
haps grammar  and  rhetoric,  fall  within  the  sphere  of  the  Socratic  method; 
hut  to  apply  this  method  of  instruction  to  geography,  history,  geology,  and, 
in  general,  to  subjects  where  the  material  is  inaccessible,  is  palpably  absurd. 
The  Socratic  dialogue,  in  its  negative  phase,  is  aimed  at  presumptioii.  arro- 
gance, and  pretentious  ignorance;  but  it  is  sometimes  misused  to  badger 
and  bewilder  an  honest  and  docile  pupil.  (P.) 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE   GREEKS.  25 

other  part  poor,  would  not  confess  that  he  was  a  bad  herds- 
man ;  but  it  would  surprise1  me  still  more  if  a  man  standing 
at  the  head  of  his  fellow-citizens  should  destroy  a  part  of 
them  and  corrupt  the  rest,  and  were  not  to  blush  at  his  con- 
duct and  confess  himself  a  bad  magistrate.'  This  remark 
having  come  to  the  ears  of  the  Thirty,  Critias  and  Charicles 
sent  for  Socrates,  showed  him  the  law,  and  forbade  him  to 
hold  conversation  with  the  young. 

' '  Socrates  inquired  of  them  if  he  might  be  permitted  to  ask 
questions  touching  what  might  seem  obscure  to  him  in  this 
prohibition.  Upon  their  granting  this  permission:  'I  am 
prepared,'  he  said,  '  to  obey  the  laws,  but  that  I  may  not 
violate  them  through  ignorance,  I  would  have  you  clearly  in- 
form me  whether  you  interdict  the  art  of  speaking  because  it 
belongs  to  the  number  of  things  which  are  good,  or  because 
it  belongs  to  the  number  of  things  which  are  bad.  In  the 
first  case,  one  ought  henceforth  to  abstain  from  speaking 
what  is  good  ;  in  the  second,  it  is  clear  that  the  effort  should 
be  to  speak  what  is  right.' 

"Thereupon  Charicles  became  angry,  and  said:  'Since 
you  do  not  understand  us,  we  will  give  you  something  easier 
to  comprehend  :  we  forbid  you  absolutely  to  hold  conversa- 
tion with  the  young.'  'In  order  that  it  may  be  clearly  seen,' 
said  Socrates,  '  whether  I  depart  from  what  is  enjoined,  tell 
me  at  what  age  a  youth  becomes  a  man.'  '  At  the  time 
when  he  is  eligible  to  the  senate,  for  he  has  not  acquired 
prudence  till  then  ;  so  do  not  speak  to  young  men  who  are 
below  the  age  of  thirty.' 

"  '  But  if  I  wish  to  buy  something  of  a  merchant  who  is 
below  the  age  of  thirty,  may  I  ask  him  at  what  price  he  sells 
it?' 

"  '  Certainly  you  may  ask  such  a  question;  but  you  are 
accustomed  to  raise  inquiries  about  multitudes  of  things 


26  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

which  are  perfectly  well  known  to  you ;  it  is  this  which  is 
forbidden.' 

' "  So  I  rhust  not  reply  to  a  young  man  who  asks  me  where 
Charicles  lives,  or  where  Critias  is.'  'You  may  reply  to  such 
questions,'  said  Charicles.  '  But  recollect,  Socrates,'  added 
Critias,  '  you  must  let  alone  the  shoemakers,  and  smiths,  and 
other  artisans,  for  I  think  they  must  already  be  very  much 
worn  out  by  being  so  often  in  your  mouth.' 

"  'I  must,  therefore,'  said  Socrates,  'forego  the  illustra- 
tions I  draw  from  these  occupations  relative  to  justice,  piety, 
and  all  the  virtues.' " l 

In  the  final  passage  of  this  cutting  dialogue,  observe  the 
elevation  of  tone  and  the  gravity  of  thought.  So  Socrates 
had  marvellous  skill  in  allying  enthusiasm  with  irony. 

Here  is  an  extract  in  which  Socrates  applies  the  maieutic 
att  to  the  establishment  of  a  moral  truth,  the  belief  in  God : 

"  I  will  mention  a  conversation  he  once  had  in  my  pres- 
ence with  Aristodemus,  surnarned  the  Little,  concerning  the 
gods.  He  knew  that  Aristodemus  neither  sacrificed  to  the 
gods,  nor  consulted  the  oracles,  but  ridiculed  those  who  look 
part  in  these  religious  observances.  'Tell  me,  Aristodemus,' 
said  he,  '  are  there  men  whose  talents  yon  admire  ? '  '  There 
are,'  he  replied.  '  Then  tell  us  their  names.'  said  Socratos. 
'  In  epic  poetry  I  especially  admire  Homer ;  in  dithyrambic, 
Melanippides ;  in  tragedy,  Sophocles ;  in  statuary,  Poly- 
cletus  ;  in  painting,  Zeuxis.'  'But  what  artists  do  you  think 
most  worthy  of  admiration,  those  who  form  images  destitute 
of  sense  and  movement,  or  those  who  produce  animated 
beings,  endowed  with  the  faculty  of  thinking  and  acting?' 
'  Those  who  form  animated  beings,  for  these  are  the  work  of 
intelligence  and  not  of  chance.'  '  And  which  do  you  regard 

1  Memorabilia,  I.  u. 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE  GREEKS.  27 

as  the  creation  of  intelligence,  and  which  the  product  of 
chance,  those  works  whose  purpose  cannot  be  recognized, 
or  those  whos'e  utility  is  manifest? '  '  It  is  reasonable  to 
attribute  to  an  intelligence  the  works  which  have  some  useful 
purpose.'"1 

Socrates  then  points  out  to  Aristodemus  how  admirably 
thc  different  organs  of  the  human  body  are  adapted  to  the 
functions  of  life  and  to  the  use  of  man.  And  so  proceeding 
from  example  to  example,  from  induction  to  induction, 
always  keeping  the  mind  of  his  auditor  alert  by  the  questions 
he  raises,  and  the  answers  that  he  suggests,  forcing  him  to 
do  his  share  of  the  work,  and  giving  him  an  equal  share  in 
the  train  of  reasoning,  he  finally  brings  him  to  the  goal 
which  is  to  make  him  recognize  the  existence  of  God. 

27.  THE  REPUBLIC  OF  PLATO.  —  "Would  yon  form," 
said  J.  J.  Rousseau,  "an  idea  of  public  education?  rea'd 
the  Republic  of  Plato.  It  is  the  finest  treatise  on  education 
ever  written."  For  truth's  sake  we  must  discount  the  en- 
thusiasm of  Rousseau.  The  Republic  doubtless  contains 
some  elements  of  a  wise  and  practical  scheme  of  education  ; 
but,  on  the  whole,  it  is  but  an  ideal  creation,  a  compound  of 
paradoxes  and  chimeras.  In  Plato's  ideal  commonwealth,  the 
individual  and  the  family  itself  are  sacrificed  to  the  State. 
Woman  becomes  so  mu<h  like  man  as  to  be  subjected  to 
the  same  gymnastic  exercises ;  she  too  must  be  a  soldier  as 
he  is.  Children  know  neither  father  nor  mother.  From  the 
day  of  their  birth  they  are  given  in  charge  of  common  nurses, 
veritable  public  functionaries.  In  that  common  fold,  *'  care 
shall  be  taken  that  no  mother  recognize  her  offspring."  We 
may  guess  that  in  making  this  pompous  eulogy  of  the  Repub- 
lic, the  paradoxical  author  of  the  Enule  hoped  to  prepare 

1  Memorabilia,  I.  iv. 


28  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

the   reader   for   giving  a  complaisant  welcome   to  his  own 
dreams. 

28.  THE  EDUCATION  OP  WARRIORS  AND  MAGISTRATES.  — 
Plato,  by  some  unexplained  recollection  of  the  social  con- 
stitution of  the  Hindoos,  established  three  castes  in  his  ideal 
State,  —  laborers  and   artisans,  warriors,  and   magistrates. 
There  was  no  education  for  laborers  and  artisans ;  it  was 
sufficient  for  men  of  this  caste  to  learn  a  trade.     In  politics, 
Plato  is  an  aristocrat ;  he  feels   a  disdain    for  the  people, 
"  that  robust  and  indocile  animal."     It  should  be  observed, 
however,   that  the  barriers  which  he  set  up  between  these 
three  social  orders  are  not  insuperable.     If   a  child  of  the 
inferior  class  gives  evidence  of  exceptional  qualities,  he  must 
be  admitted  to  the  superior  class  ;  and  so  if  the  son  of  a 
warrior  or  of  a  magistrate  is  notably  incompetent  and  un- 
worthy of  his  rank,  he  must  suffer  forfeiture,  and  become 
artisan  or  laborer. 

As  to  the  education  which  he  designs  for  the  warriors  and 
the  magistrates,  Plato  is  minutely  careful  in  regulating  it. 
The  education  of  the  warriors  comprises  two  parts,  —  music 
and  gymnastics.  The  education  of  the  magistrates  consists 
of  a  training  in  philosophy  of  a  high  grade  ;  they  are  ini- 
tiated into  all  the  sciences  and  into  metaphysics.  Plato's 
statesmen  must  be,  not  priests,  as  in  the  East,  but  scholars 
and  philosophers. 

29.  Music  AND  GYMNASTICS.  —  Although  Plato  attaches  a 
high  value   to  gymnastics,  he  gives   precedence    to  music. 
Before  forming   the  body,  Plato,  the  idealist,   would  form 
the  soul,  because  it  is  the  soul,  according  to  him,  which.  l>y 
its  own  virtue,  gives  to  the  body  all  the  perfection  of  which 
it  is  capable.     Even  in  physical  exercises,  the  purpose  should 
be  to  give  increased  vigor  to  the  soul :   "In  the  training  cf 


EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  GREEKS.        29 

the  body,  our  young  men  shall  aim,  above  everything  else, 
at  augmenting  moral  power."  Note  this  striking  picture  of 
the  man  who  trains  only  his  body  :-**"Let  a  man  apply  him-'- 
self  to  gymnastics,  and  become  trained,  and  eat  much,  and  \ 
wholly  neglect  music  and  philosophy,  and  at  lirst  his  body 
will  become  strengthened  ;  but  if  he  does  nothing  else,  and 
holds  no  converse  with  the  Muses,  though  his  soul  have  some 
natural  inclination  to  learn,  yet  if  it  remains  uncultivated 
by  acquiring  knowledge,  by  inquiry,  by  discourse,  in  a  word, 
by  some  department  of  music,  that  is,  by  intellectual  educa- 
tion, it  will  insensibly  become  weak,  deaf,  and  blind.  Like 
a  wild  beast,  such  a  man  will  live  in  ignorance  and  rudeness, 
with  neither  grace  nor  politeness!^  However,  Plato  is  far 
from  despising  health  and  physical  strength.  On~tlie~con- 
trary,  it  is  a  reproach  to  him  that  he  has  imposed  on  the 
citizens  of  his  Republic  the  obligation  of  being  physically 
sound,  and  of  having  excluded  from  it  all  those  whose  in- 
firmities and  feeble  constitution  condemn  them  to  "drag- 
out  a  dying  life."  The  right  to  live,  in  Plato's  city,  as  in 
the  most  of  ancient  societies,  belonged  only  to  men  of  robust 
health.  The  weak,  the  ailing,  the  wretched,  all  who  arc  of 
infirm  constitution, — Plato  does  not  go  so  far  as  ordering 
such  to  be  killed,  but,  what  amounts  almost  to  the  same 
thing,  —  "they  shall  be  exposed,"  that  is,  left  to  die.  The 
good  of  the  State  demands  that  every  man  be  sacrificed 
whose  health  renders  him  unfit  for  civil  duties.  This  cruel 
and  implacable  doctrine  shocks  us  in  the  case  of  him  whom 
Montaigne  calls  the  divine  Plato,  and  shocks  us  even  more 
when  we  discover  it  among  contemporary  philosophers,  whom 
the  inspirations  of  Christian  charity  or  the  feeling  of  human 
fraternity  should  have  preserved  from  such  rank  heartless- 
ness.  Is  it  not  Herbert  Spencer  who  blames  modern  so- 
cieties for  nourishing  the  diseased  and  assisting  the  infirm? 


30  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

30.  RELIGION  AND  ART  IN  EDUCATION. — Plato  had 
formed  a  high  ideal  of  the  function  of  art  in  education,  but 
this  did  not  prevent  him  from  being  severe  against  certain 
forms  of  art,  particularly  comedy  and  tragedy,  and  poetry 
in  general.  He  would  have  the  poets  expelled  from  the  city 
and  conducted  to  the  frontier,  though  paying  them  homage 
with  perfumes  which  will  continue  to  be  shed  upon  their 
heads,  and  with  flowers  with  which  they  will  ever  be  crowned. 
He  admits  no  other  poetry  than  that  which  reproduces  the 
manners  and  discourse  of  a  good  man,  and  celebrates  the 
brave  deeds  of  the  gods,  or  chants  their  glory.  As  a  severe 
moralist  and  worshipper  of  the  divine  goodness,  he  condemns 
the  poets  of  his  time,  either  because  they  attribute  to  the 
divinity  the  vices  and  passions  of  men,  or  because  they  invest 
the  imagination  with  base  fears  as  they  speak  of  Cocytus 
and  the  Styx,  and  portray  a  frightful  hell  and  gods  always 
mad  with  desire  to  persecute  the  human  race.  Elsewhere, 
in  the  Laws,  Plato  explains  his  conception  of  religion.  He 
says  that  the  religious  books  placed  in  the  hands  of  children 
should  be  selected  with  as  much  care  as  the  milk  of  a  nnrsc. 
God  is  an  infinite  goodness  who  watches  over  men,  and  he 
should  be  honored,  not  by  sacrifices  and  vain  ceremonies, 
but  by  lives  of  justice  and  virtue. 

-  For  making  men  moral,  Plato  counts  more  upon  art  than 
upon  religious  feeling.  To  love  letters,  to  hold  converse 
with  the  Muses,  to  cultivate  music  and  dancing,  such,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  noble  spirits  of  Athens,  is  the  natural  route 
towards  moral  perfection.  lu  their  view,  moral  education 
is  above  all  an  education  in  art.  The  soul  rises  to  the  good 
through  the  beautiful.  "  Beautiful  and  good  "  (KOAO?  KOL 
dya^ds)  are  two  words  constantly  associated  in  the  speech  of 
the  Greeks.  Even  to-day  we  have  much  to  learn  from 
reflections  like  these:  "We  ought,"  says  Plato,  "to  seek 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE   GREEKS.  31 

out  artists  who  by  the  power  of  genius  can  trace  out  the 
nature  of  the  fair  and  the  graceful,  that  our  young  men, 
dwelling,  as  it  were,  in  a  healthful  region,  may  drink  in  good 
from  every  quarter,  whence  any  emanation  from  noble  works 
may  strike  upon  their  eye  or  their  ear,  like  a  gale  wafting 
health  from  salubrious  lands,  and  win  them  imperceptibly 
from  their  earliest  years  into  resemblance,  love,  and  harmony 
with  the  true  beauty  of  reason. 

'•Is  it  not,  then,  on  these  accounts  that  we  attach  such\ 
supreme  importance  to  a  musical  education,  because  rhythm 
and  harmony  sink  most  deeply  into  the  recesses  of  the  soul, 
bringing  gracefulness  in  their  train,  and  making  a  man 
graceful  if  he  be  rightly  nurtured;  but  if  not,  the  reverse? 
and  also  because  he  that  has  been  duly  nurtured  therein  will 
have  the  keenest  eye  for  defects,  whether  in  the  failures  of 
art,  or  in  the  misgrowths  of  nature  ;  and  feeling  a  most  just 
disdain  for  them,  will  commend  beautiful  objects,  and  gladly 
receive  them  into  his  soul,  and  feed  upon  them,  and  grow  to  be 
noble  and  good  ;  whereas  he  will  rightly  censure  and  hate  all 
repulsive  objects,  even  in  his  childhood,  before  he  is  able  to 
be  reasoned  with  ;  and  when  reason  comes,  he  will  welcome 
her  most  cordially  who  can  recognize  her  by  the  instinct 
of  relationship,  and  because  he  has  been  thus  nurtured  ?  "  l 

31.  HIGH  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION. — In  the  Republic 
of  Plato  the  intellectual  education  of  the  warrior  class 
remains  exclusively  literary  and  aesthetic.  In  addition  to 
this,  the  education  of  the  ruling  class  is  to  be  scientific  and 
philosophic.  The  future  magistrate,  after  having  received 
the  ordinary  instruction  up  to  the  age  of  twenty,  is  to  be 
initiated  into  the  abstract  sciences,  mathematics,  geometry, 

1  Republic,  401,  402.  I  have  quoted  from  the  version  of  Vaughan  and 
Davies.  (P.) 


32  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

and  astronomy.  To  this  scientific  education,  which  is  to 
continue  for  ten  years,  there  will  succeed  for  five  years  the 
study  of  dialectics,1  or  philosophy,  which  develops  the  highest 
faculty  of  man,  the  reason,  and  teaches  him  to  discover, 
through  and  beyond  the  fleeting  appearances  of  the  world  of 
sense,  the  eternal  verities  and  the  essence  of  things.  But 
Plato  prolongs  the  education  of  his  magistrates  still  further. 
After  having  given  them  the  nurture  of  reason  and  intellectual 
insight,  he  sends  them  back  to  the  cavern 2  at  the  age  of 
thirty-five,  that  is,  calls  them  back  to  public  life,  and  makeo 
them  pass  through  all  kinds  of  civil  and  military  employ- 
ments, until  finally,  at  the  age  of  fifty,  in  possession  of  all 
the  endowments  assured  by  consummate  experience  super- 
added  to  profound  knowledge,  they  are  fitted  to  be  charged 
with  the  burdens  of  office.  In  the  Republic  of  Plato  states- 
men are  not  improvised.  And  yet  in  this  elaborate  system 
of  instruction  Plato  ornits  two  subjects  of  great  importance. 
On  the  one  hand,  he  entirely  omits  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences,  because,  in  his  mystic  idealism,  things  of  sense  are 
delusive  and  unreal  images,  and  so  did  not  appear  to  him 
worthy  of  arresting  the  attention  of  the  mind ;  and  on  the 
other,  though  coming  after  Herodotus,  and  though  a  con- 

"~  T  Dialectic,  as  used  in  the  Republic,  is  neither  philosophy  nor  logic. 
I  doubt  whether  it  can  be  considered  a  subject  of  instruction  at  all.  It 
is  rather  a  method  or  an  exercise,  the  purpose  of  which  is  to  subject 
received  opinions,  formulated  knowledge,  current  beliefs,  etc..  to  a  sifting 
or  analysis  for  the  purpose  of  distinguishing  the  real  from  the  apparent, 
the  true  from  the  false.  The  Socratic  dialogues  are  examples  of  the  dialectic 
method.  Dialectic  might  be  defined  as  the  method  of  thouyJit  proper  or  the 
discursive  reason  in  act.  (P.) 

2  See  the  allegory  of  the  cavern,  Republic,  Book  vn.  In  Plato's 
scheme  of  education,  knowing  is  to  precede  doing,  thus  following  Socra- 
tes (Memorabilia,  IV.  chap,  n.)  and  Bias  (TviaQi  KO\  -rare  n-parre),  and 
anticipating  Bacon  (''studies  perfect  nature,  and  are  perfected  by  ex- 
perience"). (P.) 


EDUCATION    AMONG    THE    GREEKS.  33 

temporary  of  Thucydides,  he  makes  no  mention  of  history, 
doubtless  through  a  contempt  for  tradition  and  the  past. 

32.  THE  LAWS.  —  In  the  Laws,  the  work  of  his  old  age, 
Plato  disavows  in  part  the  chimeras  of  the  Republic,  and 
qualifies  the  radicalism  of  that  earlier  work.  The  philoso- 
pher descends  to  the  earth  and  really  condescends  to  the 
actual  state  of  humanity.  He  renounces  the  distinction  of 
social  castes,  and  his  very  practical  and  very  minute  precepts 
are  applied  without  distinction  to  children  of  all  classes.1 

First  note  this  excellent  definition  of  the  end  of  education  :  \ 
"  A  good  education  is  that  which  gives  to  the  body  and  to   \ 
the  soul  all  the  beauty  and  all  the  perfection  of  which  they  ) 
are  capable."     As  to  methods,  it  seems  that  Plato  hesitates 
between  the  doctrine  of  effort  and  the  doctrine  of  attractive 
toil.     In  fact,  he  says  on  the  one  hand  that  education  is  a 
very  skilful  discipline  which,  by  way  of  amusement?  leads  the 
mind  of  the  child  to  love  that  which  is  to  make  it  finished. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  protests  against  the  weakness  of  those 
parents  who  seek  to  spare  their  children  every  trouble  and 
every  pain.     "  I  am  persuaded,"  he  says,  "  that  the  inclina- 
tion to  humor  the  likings  of  children  is  the  surest  of  all  ways 
to  spoil  them.     We  should  not  make  too  much  haste  in  our 
search  after  what  is  pleasurable,  especially  as  we  shall  never 
be  wholly  exempt  from  what  is  painful." 

Let  us  add  this  definition  of  a  good  education:  "I  call 
education  the  virtue  which  is  shown  by  children  when  the 
feelings  of  joy  or  of  sorrow,  of  love  or  of  hate,  which  arise 
in  their  souls,  are  made  conformable  to  order." 

1  See  especially  Book  vn.  of  the  Lavs. 

-  Compare  also  this  quotation:  "A  free  mind  ought  to  learn  nothing  as 
a  slave.    The  lesson  that  is  made  to  enter  the  mind  by  force,  will  not     \ 
remain  there.    Then  use  no  violence  towards  children;  the  rather,  cause 
them  to  learn  while  playing." 


34  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

With  the  statement  of  these  principles,  Plato  enters  into 
details.  For  children  up  to  the  age  of  six,  he  recommends 
the  use  of  swaddling-clothes.  The  habit  of  rocking,  the 
natural  plays  which  children  find  out  for  themselves,  the 
separation  of  the  sexes  ;  swimming,  the  bow,  and  the  javelin, 
for  boys  ;  wrestling  for  giving  bodily  vigor,  and  dancing,  for 
graceful  movement ;  reading  and  writing  reserved  till  the 
tenth  year  and  learned  for  three  }-ears. 

It  would  require  too  much  time  to  follow  the  philosopher 
to  the  end.  In  the  rules  he  proposes,  he  makes  a  near 
approach  to  the  practices  followed  by  the  Athenians  of  his 
day.  The  Republic  was  a  work  of  pure  imagination.  The 
Laics  are  scai'cely  more  than  a  commentary  on  the  actual 
state  of  practice.  But  here  we  still  find  what  was  nearest 
the  soul  of  Plato,  the  constant  search  for  a  higher  morality. 

33.  XENOPHON. — As  an  educator,  Xenophon  obeyed  two 
different   influences.     His   master,  Socrates,  was   his  good 
genius.     That  graceful  and  charming  book,  the  Economics, 
was  written  under  the  benign  and  tempered  inspiration  of  the 
great  Athenian  sage.     But  Xenophon  also  had  his  evil  genius, 
—  the   immoderate   enthusiasm  which   he  felt   for    Sparta. 
her  institutions  and  her  laws.     The  first  book  of  the  Cyr»j«i  - 
dia,  which  relates  the  rules  of  Persian  education,  is  an  unfor- 
tunate imitation  of  the  laws  of  Lycurgus. 

34.  THE  ECONOMICS,  AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMAN.  — 
All  should  read  the  Economics,  that  charming  sketch  of  the 
education  of  woman.     We  may  say  of  this  little  work  what 
Renan  has  said  of  the  writings  of  Plutarch  on  the  same  sub- 
ject :  "  Where  shall  we  find  a  more  charming  ideal  of  family 
life?     What  good  nature!      What  sweetness  of   manners! 
What  chaste  and  lovable  simplicity  !  "     Before  her  marriage, 
the  Athenian  maiden  has  learned  only  to  spin  wool,  to  be 


EDUCATION    AMONG    THE   GREEKS.  35 

discreet,  and  to  ask  no  questions,  —  virtues  purely  negative. 
Xenophon  assigns  to  her  husband  the  duty  of  training  her 
mind  and  of  teaching  her  the  positive  duties  of  family  life,  — 
order,  economy,  kindness  to  slaves,  and  tender  care  of 
children.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Athenian  woman  was 
still  held  in  a  position  of  inferiority.  Shut  up  in  her  own 
apartments,  it  was  an  exception  that  she  learned  to  read  and 
write  ;  it  was  very  rare  that  she  was  instructed  in  the  arts 
and  sciences.  The  idea  of  human  dignity  and  of  the  value 
of  the  human  person  had  not  yet  appeared.  Man  had  value 
only  in  proportion  to  the  services  which  he  could  render  the 
State,  or  commonwealth,  and  woman  formed  no  part  of  the 
commonwealth.  Xenophon  has  the  merit  of  rising  above 
the  prejudices  of  his  time,  and  of  approaching  the  ideal  of 
the  modern  family,  in  calling  woman  to  participate  more  inti- 
mately in  the  affairs  of  the  house  and  in  the  occupations  of 
the  husband.1 

35.  THE  CYROPTEDIA. —  The  Cyropcedia  is  not  worthy  of 
the  same  commendation.  Under  the  pretext  of  describing 
the  organization  of  the  Persian  State,  Xenophon  here  traces, 
after  his  manner,  the  plan  of  an  education  absolutely  uniform 
and  exclusively  military.  There  is  no  domestic  education, 
no  individual  liberty,  no  interest  in  letters  and  arts.  When 
the  period  of  infancy  is  over,  the  young  Persian  is  made 
subject  to  military  duty,  and  must  not  leave  the  encamp- 
ment, even  at  night.  The  state  is  but  a  camp,  and  human 
existence  a  perpetual  military  parade.  Montaigne  praises 
Xenophon  for  having  said  that  the  Persians  taught  their 
children  virtue  "  as  other  nations  do  letters."  But  it  is 
difficult  to  form  an  estimate  of  the  methods  which  were  fol- 
lowed in  these  schools  of  justice  and  temperance,  and  we 

1  See  particularly  Chaps,  vii.  and  vm. 


36  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

may  be  allowed  to  suspect  the  efficiency  of  the  means  pro- 
posed by  Xenophon ;  for  example,  that  which  consisted  in 
transforming  the  petty  quarrels  of  the  scholars  into  regular 
trials  which  were  followed  by  sentences,  acquittals,  or  convic- 
tions. The  author  of  the  Cyropcedia  is  on  surer  ground 
when,  recollecting  his  own  studies,  he  recommends  the  study 
of  history  to  those  who  would  become  just.  He  teaches 
temperance  by  practice  rather  than  by  precept ;  his  pupils 
have  only  bread  for  their  food,  only  cresses  for  seasoning, 
and  only  water  for  their  drink. 

Whatever  may  be  the  faults  and  the  fancies  of  the  Cyro- 
pcRdia,  we  must  recollect,  as  a  partial  excuse  for  them,  that 
the  purpose  of  the  writer  in  tracing  this  picture  of  a  simple, 
frugal,  and  courageous  life,  was  to  induce  a  reaction  against 
the  excesses  of  the  fashionable  and  formal  life  of  the 
Athenians.  As  Rousseau,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  protested  against  the  license  and  the  artificial 
manners  of  his  time  by  advising  an  imaginary  return  to 
nature,  so  Xenophou,  a  contemporary  of  the  sophists,  held 
forth  the  sturdy  virtues  of  the  Persians  in  opposition  to  the 
degenerate  manners  of  the  Greeks  and  the  refinements  of  an 
advanced  civilization. 

36.  ARISTOTLE  :  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  HIS  FLAX  OF 
EDUCATION.  —  By  his  vast  attainments,  b}'  his  encyclopaedic 
knowledge,  by  the  experimental  nature  of  his  researches,  and 
by  the  positive  and  practical  tendencies  of  his  genius, 
Aristotle  was  enabled  to  excel  Plato  in  clearness  of  insight 
into  pedagogical  questions.  He  had  another  advantage  over 
Plato  in  having  known  and  enjoyed  the  delights  of  family 
life,  and  in  having  loved  and  trained  his  own  children,  of 
whom  he  said,  "  parents  love  their  children  as  a  part  of 
themselves."  Let  us  add,  finally,  that  he  was  a  practical 
teacher,  since  he  was  the  preceptor  of  Alexander  from  343 


EDUCATION    AMONG   THE    GREEKS.  37 

to  340  B.C.  Such  opportunities,  superadded  to  "the  force  of 
the  most  mighty  genius  the  world  has  ever  seen,  give  promise 
of  a  competent  and  clear-sighted  educator.  Unfortunately, 
we  have  lost  the  treatise,  On  Education  (Trf.pl  TratSeias),  which 
on  the  authority  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  Aristotle  is  said  to 
have  composed  ;  and  to  form  some  conception  of  his  ideas 
on  education,  we  have  at  our  disposal  only  some  imperfect 
sketches,  some  portions,  and  those  in  an  imperfect  state, 
of  his  treatises  on  ethics  and  politics.1 

Whoever  labors  to  give  stability  to  the  family,  and  to 
tighten  its  bond  of  union,  labors  also  for  the  promotion  of 
education.  Even  in  this  respect,  education  is  under  great 
obligations  to  Aristotle.  In  him  the  communism  of  Plato 
finds  an  able  critic.  That  feeling  of  affection  which  we  of 
to-day  would  call  charit}-  or  fraternity,  he  declared  to  be  the 
guaranty  and  the  foundation  of  social  life.  Now,  communism 
weakens  this  feeling  by  diluting  it,  just  as  a  little  honey 
dropped  into  a  large  quantity  of  water  thereby  loses  all  -  its 
sweetness.  "There  are  two  things  which  materially  con- 
tribute to  the  rise  of  interest  and  attachment  in  the  hearts  of 
men,  —  property  and  the  feeling  of  affection."  It  was  thus 
in  the  name  of  good  sense,  and  in  opposition  to  the  dis- 
tempered fancies  of  Plato,  that  Aristotle  vindicated  the 
rights  of  the  family  and  the  individual. 

37.  PUBLIC  EDUCATION.  — But  Aristotle  does  not  go  so  far 
as  his  premises  would  seem  to  lead  him,  and  relinquish  to 
parents  the  care  of  educating  their  children.  In  accordance 
with  the  general  tendencies  of  antiquity,  he  declares  himself 
the  partisan  of  an  education  that  is  public  and  common. 
He  commends  the  Spartans  for  having  ordained  that  "  edu- 
cation should  be  the  same  for  all."  "  As  there  is  one  end 

1  See  especially  the  Politics,  Books  iv.,  v. 


38  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

in  view  in  every  city,"  he  says,  "  it  is  evident  that  education 
ought  to  be  one  and  the  same  in  all,  and  that  this  should  be 
a  common  care,  and  not  of  each  individual.  ...  It  is  the 
duty  of  the  legislator  to  regulate  this  interest  for  all  the 
citizens."  There  must,  therefore,  be  the  intervention  of 
the  State,  not  from  the  day  of  birth,  as  Plato  would  have  it, 
for  the  nursing  of  infants,  but  only  at  the  age  of  seven,  for 
instructing  and  training  them  in  the  habits  of  virtue. 

What,  then,  should  be  the  training  of  the  child,  and  upon 
what  subjects  would  Aristotle  direct  his  studies? 

38.   THE  PROGRESSIVE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HUMAN  NATURE. 
—  An  essential  and  incontrovertible  distinction  is  taken  by 
the  Greek  philosopher  as  his  starting-point.  CThere  are,  fce^ 
eays~,  three  moments,  three  stages,  in  human  development : 

/first,  there  is  the  physical  life  of  the  body  ;  then,  instinct  and 
sensibility,  or  the  irrational  part  of  the  soul ;  and  finally,  the 

\intelligence,  or  the  reason.)  From  this,  Aristotle  concludes 
that  the  course  of  discipline  and  study  should  be  graduated 
according  to  these  three  degrees  of  life.  ^The  first  care 
should  necessarily  be  given  to  the  body  rather  than  to  the 
mind  ;  and  then  to  that  part  of  the  spiritual  nature  which  is 
the  seat  of  the  desires.*^  But  he  adds  this  important  obser- 
vation, which  is  a  refutation  of  Rousseau  in  advance  :  '(In  the 
Ts  [  care  which  we  give  to  the  sensibilities,  we  must  not  leave  out 
of  account  the  intelligence  ;  and  in  our  care  of  the  body,  we 


"-must  not  forget  the  soul,  j     _4^-Ov«i 


39.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION. — The  son  of  a  physician  of  the 
Macedonian  court,  and  well  versed  in  the  natural  sciences, 
Aristotle  is  very  happy  in  his  treatment  of  physical  educa- 
tion. It  begins  before  the  child  is  born,  even  before  it  has 
been  conceived.  Consequently  he  enjoins  a  legal  regulation 
of  marriages,  interdicts  unions  that  are  too  early  or  too  late, 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE   GREEKS.  39 

indicates  the  climatic  conditions  most  favorable  for  marriage, 
and  gives  mothers  wise  counsels  on  matters  of  hygiene,  rec- 
ommending them  to  nurse  their  own  children,  and  prescrib- 
ing cold  baths.  Such,  in  outline,  is  a  plan  which  a  modern 
hygienist  would  not  disavow. 

40.  INTELLECTUAL  AND  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  It  was  the 
opinion  of  Aristotle  that  intellectual  education  should  not 
begin  before  the  age  of  five.  But,  in  accordance  with  the 
principle  stated  above,  this  period  of  waiting  should  not  be 
the  occasion  of  loss  to  the  intelligence  of  the  child ;  even  his 
play  should  be  a  preparation  for  the  work  to  which  he  will 
apply  himself  at  a  later  period.  On  the  other  hand,  Aristotle 
strongly  insists  on  the  necessity  of  shielding  the  child  from 
nil  pernicious  influences,  such  as  those  which  come  from 
association  with  slaves,  or  from  immoral  plays. 

In  accord  with  all  his  contemporaries,  Aristotle  includes 
grammar,  gymnastics,  and  music,  among   the   elements  of 
instruction.     To  these  he  adds  drawing.     But  he  is  chiefly 
preoccupied  with  music,  by  reason  of   the    moral  influence 
which  he   attributes   to   it.     He    shared   the    prepossession 
which  caused  the  Greeks  to  say,  that  to  relax  or  to  reform    , 
the  manners  of  a  people,  it  suffices  to  add  a  string  to  the   | 
lyre  or  to  take  one  from  it.1 

Aristotle  was  strongly  preoccupied  with  moral  education. 
Like  Plato,  he  insists  on  the  greatest  care  in  forming  the 
moral  habits  of  early  life.  In  his  different  writings  on  ethics 
he  has  discussed  different  human  virtues  in  a  spirit  at  once 
wise,  practical,  and  liberal.  No  one  has  better  sung  the 

1  It  seems  impossible  to  comprehend  the  almost  sovereign  power  which 
the  Greeks  ascribed  to  music,  unless  we  conceive  that  the  Greek  was  en- 
dowed with  peculiar  and  extreme  sensitiveness.     Perhaps  there  is  special    ( 
significance  in  the  story  of  Orpheus  and  his  lyre.    (P.) 


40  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

praises  of  justice,  of  which  he  says,  "  Neither  the  evening 
nor  the  morning  star  inspires  as  much  respect  as  justice." 

It  would  do  Aristotle  injustice  to  seek  for  a  complete 
expression  of  his  thoughts  on  education  in  the  incomplete 
and  curtailed  statements  of  theory  which  are  found  in  his 
Politics.  In  connection  with  these,  we  should  recall  the  ad- 
mirable instruction  which  he  himself  gave  in  the  Lyceum,  and 
which  embraced  almost  all  the  sciences  in  its  vast  programme. 
He  excluded  from  it  only  the  sciences  and  the  arts  which 
have  a  mechanical  and  utilitarian  character.  Enslaved  on 
this  point  to  the  prejudices  of  antiquity,  he  regarded  as 
servile  and  unworthy  of  a  free  man  whatever  has  a  direct 
bearing  on  the  practical  and  material  utilities  of  life.  He 
recommended  to  his  hearers  only  studies  of  the  intellectual 
tN'pe,  those  whose  sole  purpose  is  to  elevate  the  mind  and  to 
fill  it  with  noble  thoughts.1 

41.  FAULTS  IN  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  ARISTOTLE,  AND  IN 
GREEK  PEDAGOGY  IN  GENERAL.  —  It  must  be  said  in  con- 
clusion, that  whatever  admiration  we  may  feel  for  the  peda- 
gogy of  Aristotle,  it  was  wrong,  like  that  of  all  the  Greek 
writers,  in  being  but  an  aristocratic  system  of  education. 
The  education  of  which  Plato  and  Aristotle  dreamed  was 
restricted  to  a  small  minority,  and  was  even  made  possible 
only  because  the  majority  was  excluded  from  it.  The 
slaves,  charged  with  the  duty  of  providing  for  the  suste- 
nance of  their  superiors,  and  of  creating  for  them  the  leisure 
claimed  by  Aristotle,  had  no  more  participation  in  education 
than  in  liberty  or  in  property.  In  the  century  of  Pericles, 

1 1  thiuk  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  disfavor  shown  by  Plato  and 
Aristotle  to  practical  studies  was  merely  a  mean  prejudice.  Preoccupied 
as  they  were  with  the  disciplinary  value  of  studies,  they  may  have  seen 
that  the  culture  aim  and  the  utilitarian  aim  are  in  some  sort  antagonistic. 
(P.) 


EDUCATION   AMONG   THE   GREEKS.  41 

at  the  most  glorious  period  of  the  Athenian  republic,  let  us  . 
not  forget  that  there  were  at  Athens  nearly  four  hundred  \ 
thousand  slaves  to  do  the  bidding  of  twenty  thousand  free 
citizens.     To  indulge  in  an  easy  admiration  for  Greek  peda-   I 
gogy,  we  must  detach  it  from  its  setting,  and  consider  it  in 
itself,  apart  from  the  narrow  plan  on  which  the  Greek  states 
were  constructed,  and  apart  from  that  social  regime  which 
assured  the    education   of    some,  only  by   perpetuating  the 
oppression  of  the  man}-. 

[42.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  A  leading  conception  in 
Greek  education  is  that  of  symmetry,  or  harmony  ;  the  ideal 
man,  in  Plato's  phrase,  must  be  "harmoniously  constituted"  ; 
all  opposing  tendencies  must  be  reconciled  ;  and  while  the 
physical,  the  intellectual,  and  the  moral  must  each  be  made 
the  subject  of  systematic  training,  there  must  be  no  dispro- 
portionate development  in  either  direction. 

2.  The  preoccupation  of  the  Greek  teacher  was  discipline 
or  culture,  rather  than  the  communication  of  useful  knowl- 
edge ;  and  the  final  aim  was  a  life  of  contemplation,  rather 
than  a  life  of  action;  ethical  rather  than  practical;  "good 
conduct "  rather  than  mastery  over  what  is  material. 

3.  Physical  training  received  great  emphasis,  not  as  an 
end  in  itself,  but  as  a  means  towards  mental  and  spiritual 
health ;  and  knowledge  was  valued  chiefly  as  the  means  for 
attaining  moral  excellence. 

4.  The  staple  of  instruction  was  wisdom,  i.e.,  ethical  and 
prudential  knowledge,  which  was  the  basis  of  right  action  ; 
and  teaching,  especially  according  to  the  Socratic  conception 
of  it,  consisted  in  causing  the  pupil's  mind  to  react  on  the 
materials  supplied  by  his  own  mind.     Socrates,  says  Lewes, 
"  believed  that  in  each  man  lay  the  germs  of  wisdom.     He 
believed  that  no  science  could  be  taught;  only  drawn  out" 


42  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

5.  The  great  teaching  intrument  was    dialectic,  i.e.,  dis- 
cussion, resolution,  or  analysis.     Its  use  assumed  that  the 
subject-matter  of  instruction  was  already  in  the  pupil's  pos- 
session, and  that  the  highest  office  of   the   teacher  was  to 
liberate  the  thought  which  had  been  formed  by  the  active 
energies  of  the  pupil's  own  mind.     This  is  the  maieutic  art 
of  Socrates. 

6 .  The  mode  of  mental  activity  which  was  chiefly  brought 
into  requisition  was  the  reason  ;  in  a  secondary  degree  the 
imagination  and  the  emotions  ;  and  in  a  still  lower  degree, 
the  memory. 

7.  The  large  place  assigned  to  music  by  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle shows  that  the  culture  of  the  emotions  was  an  impor- 
tant  element   in  Greek  education.     ./Esthetic   training  was 
not  only  an  end  in  itself,  but  was  regarded  as  the  basis  of 
moral  and  religious  culture. 

8.  In  the  writings  of  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle,  we 
see   the   first   attempt   to  formulate  a  body  of   educational 
doctrine  ;  we  have  the  germs  of  a  science  of  education  based 
on  psychology,  ethics,  and  politics. 

9.  In  the  Republic,  we  see  the  theory  of  compulsion  in 
both  its  phases  :  the  State  must  provide  an  education  suita- 
ble for  State  needs  ;  and  the  young  must  accept  this  educa- 
tion because  the  State  has  ordained  it.     For  the  first  time  in 
the   history   of   thought,  the   State   appears   distinctly  and 
avowedly  as  an  educator. 

10.  Practically,  education  was  administered  on  the  basis 
of  caste  ;  though  in  the  construction  of  his  ideal  State,  Plato 
made  it  possible  for  talent,  industry,  and  worth,  to  find  their 
proper  level.] 


CHAPTER   III. 

EDUCATION   AT   ROME. 

TWO  PERIODS  IN  ROMAN  EDUCATION  J  EDUCATION  OF  THE  PRIMITIVE 
ROMANS  J  PHYSICAL  AND  MILITARY  EDUCATION  J  ROME  AT  SCHOOL  IN 
GREECE;  WHY  THE  ROMANS  HAD  NO  GREAT  EDUCATORS;  VARRO; 
CICERO;  QUINTILIAN;  THE  INSTITUTES  OF  ORATORY;  GENERAL 
PLAN  OF  EDUCATION;  THE  CHILD'S  FIRST  EDUCATION;  READING  AND 
WHITING  J  PUBLIC  EDUCATION  J  THE  DUTIES  OF  TEACHERS  J  GRAMMAR 
AND  RHETORIC;  THE  SIMULTANEOUS  STUDY  OF  THE  SCIENCES; 
SCHOOLS  FOR  PHILOSOPHY ;  SENECA  J  PLUTARCH  J  THE  LIVES  OF 
ILLUSTRIOUS  MEN;  THE  TREATISE  ON  THE  TRAINING  OF  CHILDREN; 
A  CHARMING  PICTURE  OF  FAMILY  LIFE;  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN; 
THE  FUNCTION  OF  POETRY  IN  EDUCATION  J  THE  TEACHING  OF 
MORALS;  MARCUS  AURELIUS  AND  PERSONAL  EDUCATION;  CONCLU 
SION  J  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


43.  Two  PERIODS  IN  ROMAN  EDUCATION. — In  Greece,  as 
we  have  seen,  there  were  two  essentially  different  systems  of 
education  in  use  :  at  Sparta,  a  one-sided  education,  wholly 
military,  with  no  regard  for  intellectual  culture  ;  at  Athens, 
a  complete  education,  which  brought  into  happy  harmony 
the  training  of  the  body  and  the  development  of  the  mind, 
and  by  means  of  which,  as  Thucydides  observed,  "  men 
philosophized  without  becoming  effeminate." 

Rome,  in  the  long  course  of  her  history,  followed  these    » 
two  systems  in  succession.     Under  the  Republic,  down  to   ' 
the  conquest  of  Greece,  preference  was  given  to  education 
after  the  Spartan  type  ;  while  under  the  emperors,  Athenian 
education  was   dominant,  with  a  very  marked  tendency  to 
give  the  first  place  to  an  education  in  literature  and  oratory. 


44  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

44.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  EARLY  ROMANS.  —  The  first 
schools  were  not  opened  at  Rome  till  towards  the  end  of  the 
third  century  B.C.  Till  then,  the  Romans  had  no  teachers 
save  their  parents  and  nature.  Education  was  almost  exclu- 
sively physical  and  moral,  or  rather,  military  and  religious. 
On  the  one  hand,  there  were  the  gymnastic  exercises  on  the 
Campus  Martins,  and  on  the  other,  the  recitation  of  the 
Salian  hymns,  a  sort  of  catechism  containing  the  names  of 
the  gods  and  goddesses.  Besides  this,  there  was  the  study 
of  the  Twelve  Tables,  that  is,  of  the  Roman  Law.  Men  the 
most  robust,  the  most  courageous,  the  best  disciplined,  and 
the  most  patriotic  that  ever  lived,  were  the  fruit  of  this 
natural  education.  Rome  was  the  great  school  of  the  civic  and 
military  virtues.  The  Romans  did  not  imitate  the  Athenians 
in  a  disinterested  pursuit  of  a  perfect  physical  and  intellectual 
development.  Rome  worked  for  practical  ends ;  she  was 
guided  only  by  considerations  of  utility  ;  she  had  no  regard 
for  ideals ;  her  purpose  was  simply  the  education  of  soldiers 
and  citizens  who  should  be  obedient  and  devoted.  She  did 
not  know  man  in  the  abstract ;  she  knew  only  the  Roman 
citizen. 

These  high  qualities  of  the  early  Romans  were  marred  by 
a  sort  of  brutal  insensibility  and  a  contempt  for  the  graces 
of  intellect  and  heart ;  and  leaving  out  of  account  the  cir- 
cumstances of  environment  and  race,  their  practical  virtues 
may  be  ascribed  to  three  or  four  principal  causes.  First 
among  these  was  a  firm  -family  discipline.  The  authority 
of  the  father  was  absolute,  and  answering  to  this  excessive 
power,  there  was  blind  obedience.  Another  cause  was  the 
position  of  the  mother  in  the  family.  At  Rome,  woman  was 
held  in  higher  esteem  than  at  Athens.  She  became  almost 
the  equal  of  man.  She  was  the  guardian  of  the  family  circle 
and  the  teacher  of  her  children.  The  very  name  matron 


EDUCATION   AT    ROME.  45 

inspires  respect.  Coriolanus,  who  took  up  arms  against  his 
country,  could  not  withstand  the  tears  of  his  mother  Veturia. 
The  noble  Cornelia  was  the  teacher  of  her  sons,  the  Gracchi, 
whom  she  was  accustomed  to  call  "her  fairest  jewels." 
Besides,  the  influence  of  religion  was  made  to  supplement 
the  active  efforts  of  the  family.  The  Roman  lived  sur- 
rounded by  deities.  When  a  child  was  weaned,  tradition 
would  have  it  that  one  goddess  taught  him  to  eat,  and  another 
to  drink.  Later  on,  four  goddesses  guided  his  first  steps  and 
held  his  two  hands.  All  these  superstitions  imposed  regu- 
larity and  exactness  on  the  most  ordinary  acts  of  daily 
life.  Men  breathed,  as  it  were,  a  divine  atmosphere. 
Finally,  the  young  Roman  learned  to  read  in  the  laws  of  the 
Twelve  Tables,  that  is,  in  the  civil  code  of  his  country.  He 
was  thus  accustomed  from  infancy  to  consider  the  law  as 
something  natural,  inviolable,  and  sacred. 

45.  ROME  AT  SCHOOL  IN  GREECE.  —  The  primitive  state  of 
manners  did  not  last.  Under  Greek  influence,  Roman  sim- 
plicity suffered  a  change,  and,  as  Horace  says,  Greece,  in 
being  conquered,  conquered  in  turn  her  rude  victor.  The 
taste  for  letters  and  arts  was  introduced  at  Rome  towards 
the  close  of  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  transformed  the 
austere  and  rude  education  of  the  primitive  era.  The 
Romans,  in  their  turn,  acquired  a  liking  for  fine  phrases  and 
subtile  dialectics.  Schools  were  opened,  and  the  rhetoricians 
and  philosophers  took  up  the  business  of  education.  Parents 
no  longer  charged  themselves  with  the  instruction  of  their 
children.  Following  the  fashion  at  Athens,  they  entrusted 
them  to  slaves,  without  troubling  themselves  about  the  faults 
or  even  the  vices  of  these  common  pedagogues. 

"  For  if  any  of  their  servants,"  says  Plutarch,  "  be  better 
than  the  rest,  they  dispose  some  of  them  to  follow  husbandry, 
some  to  navigation,  some  to  merchandise,  some  to  be  stew- 


46  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

ards  in  their  houses,  and  some,  lastly,  to  put  out  their  money 
to  use  for  them.  But  if  they  find  any  slave  that  is  a  drunk- 
ard or  a  glutton,  and  unfit  for  any  other  business,  to  him 
they  assign  the  government  of  their  children  ;  whereas,  a 
good  pedagogue  ought  to  be  such  a  one  in  his  disposition  as 
Phrenix,  tutor  to  Achilles,  was."1 

46.  WHY  ROME  HAD  NO  GREAT  EDUCATORS.  —  In  the  age 
of  Augustus,  when  Latin  literature  was  in  all  its  glory,  we 
are  astonished  not  to  find,  as  in  the  century  of  Pericles,  some 
great  thinker  like  Plato  or  Aristotle,  who  presents  general 
views  on  education,  and  makes  himself  famous  by  a  remark- 
able work  on  pedagogy.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
Romans  never  formed  a  taste  for  disinterested  science  and 
speculative  inquiry.  They  reached  distinction  only  in  the 
practical  sciences ;  in  the  law,  for  example,  in  which  the}' 
excelled.  Now  pedagogy,  while  in  one  sense  a  practical 
science,  nevertheless  reposes  upon  philosophical  principles, 
upon  a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  upon  a  theoretical 
conception  of  human  destiny,  —  questions  which  had  no  liv- 
ing interest  for  the  Roman  mind,  and  which  even  Cicero  has 
noticed  only  in  passing,  in  the  course  of  his  translation  of 
Plato,  made  with  his  usual  magnificence  of  literary  style. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  moreover,  that  the  Romans  seem  never 
to  have  considered  education  as  a  national  undertaking,  as  an 
affair  of  the  State.  The  Law  of  the  Twelve  Tables  is  silent 
upon  the  education  of  children.  Up  to  the  time  of  Quintil- 
ian  there  were  at  Rome  no  public  schools,  no  professional 
teachers.  In  the  age  of  Augustus  each  teacher  had  his  own 
method.  "  Our  ancestors,"  says  Cicero,  "  did  not  wish  that 
children  should  be  educated  by  fixed  rules,  determined  by 
the  laws,  publicly  promulgated  and  made  uniform  for  all."5 

1  Plutarch,  Morals,  vol.  I.  p.  9.       2  Cicero,  De  Republica,  TV.  115. 


EDUCATION   AT   ROME.  47 

And  he  does  not  seem  to  disapprove  of  this  neglect,  even 
while  noting  the  fact  that  Polybius  saw  in  this  an  important 
defect  in  Roman  institutions. 

47.  CICERO.  —  In  all  Cicero's  works  we  find  scarcely  a 
line  relative  to  education.     And  }~et  the  great  orator  ex- 
claims :  "  What  better,  what  greater  service  can  we  of  to-day 
render  the  Republic  than  to  instruct  and  train  the  young?"1 
But  lie  was  content  with  writing  fine  discourses  on  philoso- 
phy for  his  country,  abounding  more  in  eloquence  than  in 
originality. 

48.  VARRO. — A  less  celebrated  writer,  Varro,  seems  to 
have  had  some  pedagogic  instinct.     He  wrote  real  educa- 
tional works  on  grammar,  rhetoric,  history,  and  geometry. 
Most  of  these  have  been  lost ;  but  if  we  may  trust  his  contem- 
poraries, they  were  instrumental  in  the  education  of  several 
generations. 

49.  QUINTILIAN  (35-95  A.D.). — After  the  age  of  Augus- 
tus, education  became  more  and  more  an  affair  of  oratory. 
The  chief  effort  in  the  wa}'  of  education  was  a  preparation 
for  a  career  in  the  Forum.     But  from  these  vulgar  rhetori- 
cians,  occupied   with  the  exterior  artifices  of  style,   these 
"  traffickers  in  words,"  as  Saint  Augustine  called  them,  we 
must  distinguish  a  rhetorician  of  a  higher  order,  who  does 
not  separate  rhetoric  from  a  general  culture  of  the  intelligence. 
This  is  Quintilian,  the  author  of  the  Institutes  of  Oratory. 

Appointed  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  to  a  chair  of  eloquence, 
the  first  that  was  established  by  the  Roman  state,  and  called 
at  a  later  period  by  the  Emperor  Domitian  to  direct  the 
education  of  his  grand-nephews,  Quintilian  was  practically 
acquainted  with  both  public  and  private  instruction. 


1  Cicero,  De  Divinatione,  n.  2. 


48  THE   HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

50.  THE  INSTITUTES  OF  ORATORY.  — This  work,  under  the 
form  of  a  treatise  on  rhetoric,  is  in  parts  a  real  treatise  on 
education.     The  author,  in  fact,  begins  the  training  of  the 
future  orator  from  the  cradle  ;  he  gives  counsel  to  its  nurse, 
and  "  not  blushing  to  descend  to  petty  details,"  he  follows 
step  by  step  the  education  of  his  pupil.     Let  us  add,  that  in 
the  noble  ideal  which  he  conceives,  eloquence  never  being 
considered  apart   from  wisdom,  Quintilian  was  led  by  his 
verj"  subject  to  treat  of  moral  education. 

51.  His  GENERAL  PLAN  OF  EDUCATION. — The  first  book 
entire  is  devoted  to  education  in  general,  and  its  teachings 
might  be  applied  indifferently  to  all  children,  whether  des- 
tined or  not  to  the  practice  of  oratory. 

"  Has  a  son  been  born  to  you?  From  the  first  conceive 
the  highest  hopes  of  him."  Thus  Quintilian  begins.  He 
thinks  that  we  cannot  have  too  high  an  opinion  of  human 
nature,  nor  propose  for  it  too  high  a  purpose.  Minds  that 
rebel  against  all  instruction  are  unnatural.  Most  often  it  is 
the  training  which  is  at  fault ;  it  is  not  nature  that  is  to 
blame. 

52.  THE  EARLY  EDUCATION  OF  THE  CHILD.  —  The  child's 
nurses  should  be  virtuous  and  prudent.     Quiutilian  does  not 
demand  that  they  shall  be  learned,  as  the  stoic  Chrysippns 
would  have  them  ;  but  he  requires  that  their  language  shall 
be  irreproachable.    The  first  impressions  of  the  child  are  very 
durable:  "  New  vases  preserve  the  taste  of  the  first  liquor 
that  is  put  into  them  :  and  wool,  once  colored,  never  regains 
its  primitive  whiteness." 

By  an  illusion  analogous  to  that  of  the  literary  men  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  who  would  have  the  little 
French  boy  first  learn  Latin,  Quintilian  teaches  his  pupil 
Greek  before  making  him  study  his  native  tongue. 


EDUCATION   AT   HOME.  49 

Studies,  moreover,  should  begin  betimes:  "Turn  to  ac- 
count the  child's  first  years,  especially  as  the  elements  of 
learning  demand  only  memory,  and  the  memory  of  children 
is  very  tenacious." 

We  seem  to  be  listening  to  a  modern  teacher  when  Quin- 
tilian  recommends  the  avoidance  of  whatever  might  ruffle  the 
spirits  of  the  child.  "  Let  study  be  to  him  a  play  ;  ask  him 
questions  ;  commend  him  when  he  does  well ;  and  sometimes 
let  him  enjoy  the  consciousness  of  his  little  gains  in  wisdom." 

53.  READING   AND   WRITING.  —  The   passage   relative   to 
reading  deserves  to  be  quoted  in  full.     It  is  wrong,  says 
Quintilian,  to  teach  children  the  names  of  the  letters,  and 
their  respective  places  in  the  alphabet,  before  they  know  their 
shapes.     He  recommends  the  use  of  letters  in  ivoiy,  which 
children  take  pleasure  in  handling,  seeing,  and  naming. 

As  to  writing,  Quintiliau  recommends,  for  the  purpose  of 
strengthening  the  child's  hand,  and  of  preventing  it  from 
making  false  movements,  that  he  should  practise  on  wooden 
tablets  on  which  the  letters  have  been  traced  by  cutting.1 
Lftter  on,  the  copies  shall  contain,  "  not  senseless  maxims, 
but  moral  truths."  The  Roman  teacher  did  not  counsel 
haste  in  any  case.  "•  We  can  scarcely  believe,"  he  says, 
';  how  progress  in  reading  is  retarded  by  attempting  to  go 
too  fast." 

54.  PUBLIC  EDUCATION.  —  Quintilian  has  made  an  unsur- 
passed plea  for  public  education  and  its  advantages,  which 

1  In  principle,  this  is  the  same  as  the  system  of  writing  commended  by 
Locke :  "  Get  a  plate  graved  with  the  Characters  of  such  a  Hand  as  you  like 
best  ...  let  several  sheets  of  good  Writing-paper  be  printed  off  with  red 
Ink,  which  he  has  nothing  to  do  but  go  over  with  a  good  Pen  fill'd  with 
black  Ink,  which  will  quickly  bring  his  Hand  to  the  Formation  of  those 
Characters,  being  first  shewed  where  to  begin,  and  how  to  form  every 
Letter."  (On  Education,  §  160.)  (P.) 


50  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Rollin  has  reproduced  almost  entire.1  From  this  we  shall 
quote  only  the  following  passage,  which  proves  how  far  the 
contemporaries  of  Quintilian  had  already  departed  from  the 
manly  habits  of  the  early  ages  ;  and  the  truth  which  is  herein 
expressed  will  always  be  applicable  to  parents  who  are  in- 
clined to  be  over-indulgent:  "  Would  that  we  ourselves  did 
not  corrupt  the  morals  of  our  children  !  We  enervate  their 
very  infancy  with  luxuries.  That  delicacy  of  education, 
which  we  call  fondness,  weakens  all  the  powers,  both  of 
body  and  mind.  .  .  .  We  form  the  palate  of  our  children  be- 
fore we  form  their  pronunciation.  They  grow  up  in  sedan 
chairs ;  if  they  touch  the  ground,  they  hang  by  the  hands  of 
attendants  supporting  them  on  each  side.  We  are  delighted 
if  they  utter  anything  immodest.  Expressions  which  would 
not  be  tolerated  even  from  effeminate  youths,  we  hear  from 
them  with  a  smile  and  a  kiss.  Need  we  be  astonished  at  this 
behavior?  We  ourselves  have  taught  them."  2 

55.  DUTIES  OF  TEACHERS. — There  was  at  Rome,  in  the 
first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  a  high  conception  of  the 
duties  of  a  teacher :  "His  first  care  should  be  to  ascertain 
with  all  possible  thoroughness  the  mind  and  the  character  of 
the  child."  Judicious  reflections  on  the  memory,  on  the 
faculty  of  imitation,  and  on  the  dangers  of  precocious  mental 
development,  are  proofs  of  the  fine  psychological  discernment 
of  Quiutilian.  His  insight  is  no  less  accurate  when  he 
sketches  the  rules  for  moral  discipline.  "  Fear,"  he  says, 
"  restrains  some  and  unmans  others.  .  .  .  For  my  part.  I 
prefer  a  pupil  who  is  sensitive  to  praise,  whom  glory  animates, 
and  from  whom  defeat  draws  tears." 

1  "  Quintilian  has  treated  this  question  with  great  breadth  and  elo- 
quence."    (Traite  des  Etudes,  Liv.  IV.  Art.  2.) 

2  Quintilian,   Institutes  of   Oratory,  Watson's    Translation,    Book  I. 
chap.  ii.  6,  7. 


EDUCATION    AT   ROME.  51 

Quintilian  expresses  himself  decidedly  against  the  use  of 
the  rod,  "  although  custom  authorizes  it,"  he  sa3'S,  "  and 
Chrysippus  does  not  disapprove  of  it." 

56.  GRAMMAR  AND  RHETORIC.  —  Like  his  contemporaries/S^ 
Quintilian  distinguishes  studies  into  two  grades,  —  Grammar 
and  Rhetoric.     "As  soon  as  the  child  is  able  to  read  and 
write,  he  must  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  grammarian." 
Grammar  was  divided  into  two  parts,  —  the  art  of  speaking 
correctly  and  the  explication  of  the  poets.      Exercises  in 
composition,  development  lessons  called  Chrice,  and  narra- 
tives, accompanied   the    theoretical   study   of   the   rules   of 
grammar.1     It  is  to  be  observed  that  Quintilian  gives  a  high 
place  to  etymological  studies,  and  that  he  attaches  great  im- 
portance to  reading  aloud.     "  That  the  child  may  read  well, 
let  him  have  a  good  understanding  of  what  he  reads.  .  .   . 
When  he  reads  the  poets,  let  him  shun  affected  modulations. 

It  is  with  reference  to  this  manner  of  reading  that  Caesar, 
still  a  young  man,  made  this  excellent  observation :  '  If  you    ] 
are  singing,  you  sing  poorly  ;  if  you  are  reading,  why  do  you 
sing  ? ' " 

57.  THE  SIMULTANEOUS  STUDY  OF  THE  SCIENCES.  —  Quin- 
tilian is  very  far  from  confining  his  pupil  within  the  narrow 
circle  of  grammatical  study.     Persuaded   that  the  child  is 
capable  of  learning  several  things  at  the  same  time,  he  would 
have  him  taught  geometry,  music,  and  philosophy  simulta- 
neously :  — 

"  Must  he  learn  grammar  alone,  and  then  geometry,  and 
in  the  meanwhile  forget  what  he  first  learned?  As  well  ad- 
vise a  farmer  not  to  cultivate,  at  the  same  time,  his  fields,  his 
vinee,  his  olive  trees,  and  his  orchards,  and  not  to  give  his 

1  Institutes,  Book  I.  chap.  ix. 


52  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

thought  simultaneously  to  his  meadows,  his  cattle,  his  gar- 
dens, and  his  bees."  ' 

Of  course  Quintilian  considers  the  different  studies  which 
he  sets  before  his  pupil  only  as  the  instruments  for  an  educa- 
tion in  oratory.  Philosophy,  which  comprises  dialectics  or 
logic,  physics  or  the  science  of  nature,  and  lastly  morals, 
furnish  the  orator  with  ideas,  and  teach  him  the  art  of  dis- 
tributing them  into  a  consecutive  line  of  argument.  And  so 
geometry,  a  near  relative  of  dialectics,  disciplines  the  mind, 
and  teaches  it  to  distinguish  the  true  from  the  false.  Lastly, 
music  is  an  excellent  preparation  for  eloquence  ;  it  cultivates 
the  sense  of  harmony  and  a  taste  for  number  and  measure. 

58.  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  —  By  the  side  of  the 
schools  of  rhetoric,  in  which  the  art  of  speech  was  cultivated, 
imperial   Rome    saw  flourish   in  great   numbers   schools  of 
philosophy,  whose  purpose  was  the  formation  of  morals.     It 
was  through  no  lack  of  moral  sermonizing  that  there  was  a 
degeneration  in  the  virtues  of  the  Romans.    All  the  schools  of 
Greece,  especially  the  Stoics  and  the  Epicureans,  and  also 
the  schools  of  Pythagoras,  of  Socrates,   of  Plato,   and  of 
Aristotle,  had  their  representatives  at  Rome  ;  but  their  ob- 
scure names  have  scarcely  survived. 

59.  SENECA. — Among  these  philosophers  and  these  mor- 
alists of  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  Seneca  has  the 
distinction  of  standing  in  the  front  rank.     It  is  true  that  he 
was   not   the   founder   of   a  school,    but   by  his    numerous 
writings  he  succeeded  in  maintaining  among  his  contempo- 
raries at  least  some  vestiges  of  the  ancient  virtues.      His 
Letters   to   Lucilius,  letters   abounding   in    real   intellectual 
and  moral  insight,  also  contain  some  pedagogical  precepts. 


1  Institute*.  Book  I.  chap.  xn. 


EDUCATION   AT   HOME.  53 

Seneca  attempts  to  direct  school  instruction  to  practical  ends, 
in  following  out  the  thought  of  this  famous  precept :  *tf We 
should  learn,  not  for  the  sake  of  the  school,  but  for  the  pur- 
poses of  life"/ ^Non  scholce,  sed  vitce  discimus}.  Moreover, 
he  criticises  confused  and  ill-directed  reading  that  does  not 
enrich  the  understanding,  and  concludes  by  recommending 
the  profound  study  of  a  single  book  (timeo  hominem  unius 
libri) .  In  another  letter  he  remarks  that  the  best  means  for 
giving  clearness  to  one's  own  ideas  is  to  communicate  them 
to  others  ;  the  best  way  of  being  taught  is  to  teach  (docendo 
discimus) .  Let  us  quote  this  other  maxim  so  often  repeated  : 
"  The  end  is  attained  sooner  by  example  than  by  precept" 
(longum  iter  per  prvecepta,  breve  per  exempla). 

60.  PLUTARCH  (50-138  A.D.)  .  — In  the  last  period  of  Roman  \ 
civilization  two  names  deserve  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the 
educator,  —  Plutarch  and  Marcus  Aurelius.      Although   he 
was  born  in  Boeotia,  and  wrote  in  Greek,  Plutarch  belongs 
to  the  Roman  world.     He  lived  at  Rome  at  several  different 
times,  and  there  opened  a  school  in  the  reign  of  Domitian, 
where   he   lectured  on   philosophy,  literature,   and   history. 
Numerous  works  have  transmitted  to  us  the  substance  of  that 
instruction  which  had  such  an  extraordinary  success. 

61.  THE  LIVES  OF  ILLUSTRIOUS  MEN. — Translated  in  the 
fifteenth  century  by  Amyot,  the  .  Parallel  Lives  of  Plutarch 
were  for  our  fathers  a  true  code  of  morals  founded  on  his- 
tory.    How  many  of  our  great  men,  or  how  many  of  our 
men  of  worth,  have  drawn  from  this  book,  at  least  in  part, 
the  material  which  has  nurtured  their  virtues  !     L'H6pital 
and  d'Aubigne"  enriched  their  lives  from  this  source.    Henry 
IV.  said  of  this  book  :   "It  has  been  to  me  as  my  conscience, 
and  has  whispered  in  my  ear  many  virtuous  suggestions  and 


54  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

excellent  maxims  for  ray  own  conduct  and  for  the  manage- 
ment of  my  affairs."1 

62.  THE  ESSAY  ON  THE  TRAINING  OF  CHILDREN.  —  The 
celebrated  essay  entitled  Of  the  Training  of  Children,2  is  the 
first  treatise,  especially  devoted  to  education,  that  antiquity 
has  bequeathed  to  us.  Its  authenticity  has  been  called  in 
question  by  German  critics  ;  but  this  is  of  little  moment,  since 
these  critics  are  the  first  to  recognize  the  fact  that  the  author 
of  this  essay,  whoever  he  might  have  been,  was  intimately 
acquainted  with  Plutarch,  and  has  given  us  a  sufficiently 
exact  summary  of  the  ideas  which  are  more  fully  developed 
in  others  of  his  works.3 

We  shall  not  give  an  analysis  of  this  work,  which,  how- 
ever, abounds  in  interesting  reflections  on  the  primary  period 
of  education.  We  shall  simply  note  the  fundamental  thought 
of  the  essay,  its  salient  and  original  characteristic,  which  is 
its  warm  appreciation  of  the  family.  In  society,  as  Plutarch 
conceives  it,  the  State  no  longer  exercises  absolute  sover- 
eignty. Upon  the  ruins  of  the  antique  commonwealth 
Plutarch  builds  the  family.  It  is  to  the  family  that  he 
addresses  himself  in  order  to  assure  the  education  of 
children.4  On  this  point  he  is  not  in  accord  with  Quintilian. 

1  Equally  great  has  been  Plutarch'sMnfluence  on  English  thought  and 
life.    Sir  Thomas  North's  translation  of  Amyot's  version  appeared  in  1579, 
and  furnished  Shakespeare  with  the  materials  for  his  t'oriolanus,  Jitliv.f 
Cassar,  and  Antony  and  Cleopatra.    Milton,  Wordsworth,  and  Browning 
are  also  debtors  to  the  Parallel  Lives.    (P.) 

2  "Comment  il  faut  nourrir  les  enfants,"  in  the  translation  by  Amyot. 
"  Of  the  Training  of  Children,  "in  Goodwin's  edition  of  the  Morals  (Vol  .1.1. 

3  The  references  that  follow  are  to  Plutarch's  Morals.    The  first  trans- 
lation into  English  was  by  Philemon  Holland,  in   1(503.     The  American 
edition  in  five  volumes  (Boston,  1871)  is  worthy  of  all  commendation. 
The  references  I  make  are  to  this  edition.    (P.) 

4  Of  course  Plutarch,  like  all  the  writers  of  antiquity,  writes  only  in  be- 


EDUCATION   AT   ROME.  55 

What  he  recommends  is  an  education  that  is  domestic  and 
individual.  He  scarcely  admits  the  need  of  public  schools 
save  for  the  higher  instruction.  At  a  certain  age  a  young 
man,  already  trained  by  the  watchful  care  of  a  preceptor 
under  the  supervision  of  his  parents,  shall  go  abroad  to  hear 
the  lectures  of  the  moralists  and  the  philosophers,  and  to  read 
the  poets. 

63.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN.  — One  of  the  conse- 
quences of  the  exalted  function  which  Plutarch  ascribes  to 
the  family  is  that  by  this  single  act  he  raises  the  material  and 
moral  condition  of  woman.  In  his  essay  entitled  Conjugal 
Precepts,  which  recalls  the  Economics  of  Xenophon,  he 
restores  to  the  wife  her  place  in  the  household.  He  asso- 
ciates her  with  the  husband  in  the  material  support  of  the 
familv,  as  well  as  in  the  education  of  the  children.  The 
mother  is  to  nurse  her  offspring.  "  Providence,"  he  naively 
says,  "  hath  also  wisely  ordered  that  women  should  have  two 
breasts,  that  so,  if  any  of  them  should  happen  to  bear  twins, 
they  might  have  two  several  springs  of  nourishment  read}*  for 
them."1  The  mother  shall  also  take  part  in  the  instruction 
of  her  children,  and  so  she  must  herself  be  educated.  Plu- 


half  of  free-born  children  in  good  circumstances.  "  He  abandons,"  as  he 
himself  admits,  <;the  education  of  the  poor  and  the  lowly." 

Plutarch  seems  to  aim  at  what  appears  to  him  to  be  practicable.  That 
he  was  liberal  in  his  opinions  must  be  evident,  I  think,  from  this  extract : 
"  It  is  my  desire  that  all  children  whatsoever  may  partake  of  the  benefits 
of  education  alike  ;  but  if  yet  any  persons,  by  reason  of  the  narrowness  of 
their  estates,  cannot  make  use  of  my  precepts,  let  them  not  blame  me  that 
give  them,  but  Fortune,  which  disableth  them  from  making  the  advantage 
by  them  they  otherwise  might.  Though  even  poor  men  must  use  their 
utmost  endeavor  to  give  their  children  the  best  education  ;  or,  if  they  can 
not,  they  must  bestow  upon  them  the  best  that  their  abilities  will  reach." 
(Morals,  vol.  I.  pp.  19,  20.)  (P.) 

1  Of  the  Training  of  Children,  §  6. 


56  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tarch  proposes  for  her  the  highest  studies,  such  as  mathe- 
matics and  philosophy.  But  he  counts  much  more  upon  her 
natural  qualities,  than  upon  the  science  that  she  may 
acquire.  "  With  women,"  he  says,  "tenderness  of  heart  i* 
enhanced  by  a  pleasing  countenance,  by  sweetness  of  speech, 
by  an  affectionate  grace,  and  by  a  high  degree  of  sensitive- 
ness." 

64.  THE   FUNCTION  OF  POETRY  IN  EDUCATION.  —  In   the 
essay  entitled  How  a    Young  Man   Ought  to  Hear  Poems, 
Plutarch  has  given  his  opinion  as  to  the  extent  to  which 
poetry  should  be  made  an  element  in  education.     More  just 
than  Plato,  he  does  not  condemn  the  reading  of  the  poets. 
He  simply  demands  that  this  reading  should  be  done  with 
discretion,  by  choosing  those  who,   in  their  compositions, 
mingle  moral  inspiration  with  poetic  inspiration.     "Lycur- 
gus,"  he  says,  "did  not  act  like  a  man  of  sound  reason  iu 
the   course  which   he  took  to  reform  his  people  that  were 
much  inclined  to  drunkenness,  by  traveling  up  and  down  to 
destroy  all  the  vines  in  the  country ;  whereas  he  should  have 
ordered  that  every  vine  should  have  a  well  of  water  near  it, 
that  (as  Plato  saith)  the  drunken  deity  might  be  reduced  to 
temperance  by  a  sober  one."1 

65.  THE  TEACHING  or  MORALS.  —  Plutarch  is  above  all 
else  a  moralist.     If  he  adds  nothing  in  the  way  of  theory  to 
the  loft}*  doctrines  of  the  Greek  philosophers  from  whom  he 
catches  his  inspiration,  at  least  he  enters  more  profoundly 
into  the  study  of  practical  methods  which  insure  the  eflioary 
of  fine  precepts  and  exalted  doctrines.     "That  contempla- 
tion which  is  dissociated  from  practice,"  he  says,  "is  of  no 
utility."     He  would  have  young  men  come  from  lectures  on 

1  Morals,  vol.  II.  p.  44. 


EDUCATION   AT   ROME.  57 

morals,  not  only  better  instructed,  but  more  virtuous.  Of 
what  consequence  are  beautiful  maxims  unless  they  are 
embodied  in  action?  The  young  man,  then,  shall  early 
accustom  himself  to  self-government,  to  reflection  upon  his 
own  conduct,  and  to  taking  counsel  of  his  own  reason.  . 
Moreover,  Plutarch  gives  him  a  director  of  conscience,  a 
philosopher,  whom  he  will  go  to  consult  in  his  doubts,  and 
to  whom  he  will  entrust  the  keeping  of  his  soul.  But  that 
which  is  of  most  consequence  in  his  eyes  is  personal  effort, 
reflection  always  on  the  alert,  and  that  inward  effort  which 
causes  our  soul  to  assimilate  the  moral  lessons  which  we  have 
received,  and  which  causes  them  to  enter  into  the  very  struc- 
ture and  fibre  of  our  personality. 

"As  it  would  be  with  a  man  who,  going  to  his  neighbor'sN 
to  borrow  fire,  and  finding  there  a  great  and  bright  fire, 
should  sit  down  to  warm  himself  and  forget  to  go  home  ;  so 
is  it  with  the  one  who  comes  to  another  to  learn,  if  he  does 
not  think  himself  obliged  to  kindle  his  own  fire  within,  and 
influence  his  own  mind,  but  continues  sitting  by  his  master  / 
us  if  he  were  enchanted,  delighted  by  hearing."  1 

So  are  those  who  are  not  striving  to  have  a  personal 
morality,  but  who,  incapable  of  self -direction,  are  always  in 
need  of  the  tutorship  of  another. 

The  great  preoccupation  of  Plutarch  —  and  by  this  trait  he\ 
has  a  legitimate  place  among  the  great  educators  of  the 
world  —  was  to  awaken,  to  excite,  the  interior  forces  of  the 
conscience,  and  to  stimulate  the  intelligence  to  a  high  state 
of  activity.  When  he  wrote  this  famous  maxim,  "  The  soul 
is  not  a  vase  to  be  filled,  but  is  rather  a  hearth  which  is  to  be 


1  Morals,  I.  p.  463.     This  language  directly  follows  the  quotation  given 
in  the  note  (1)  at  the  close  of  this  paragraph.     (P.) 


58  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

made  to  glow,"1  he  was  not  thinking  alone  of  moral  educa- 
tion, but  also  of  a  false  intellectual  education  which,  instead 
of  training  the  mind,  is  content  with  accumulating  in  the 
memory  a  mass  of  indigested  materials.2 

66.  MARCUS  AURELICS.  —  The  wisest  of  the  Roman  em- 
perors, the  author  of  the  book  entitled  To  Myself,  better 
known  as  Meditations,  Marcus  Aurelius  deserves  mention 
in  the  history  of  pedagogy.  He  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect 
representative  of  Stoic  morality,  which  is  itself  the  highest 
/  expression  of  ancient  morality.  He  is  the  most  finished  type 
of  what  can  be  effected  in  the  way  of  soul-culture  by  the  in- 
fluence of  home-training  and  the  personal  effort  of  the  con- 
science. His  teacher  of  rhetoric  was  the  celebrated  Fronto, 
of  whose  character  we  may  judge  from  this  one  characteristic  : 
"I  toiled  hard  yesterday,"  he  wrote  to  his  pupil ;  "  I  composed 
a  few  figures  of  speech,  with  which  I  am  pleased."  On  the 
other  hand,  Marcus  Aurelius  found  examples  for  imitation  in 
his  own  family.  "  My  uncle,"  he  says  reverently,  "  taught 
me  patience.  .  .  .  From  my  father  I  inherited  modesty.  .  .  . 
To  my  mother  I  owe  my  feelings  of  piety."  Notwithstanding 
the  modesty  that  led  him  to  attribute  to  others  the  whole  of 
his  moral  worth,  it  is  especially  to  himself,  to  a  persistent 
effort  of  his  own  will,  and  to  a  ceaseless  examination  of  his 
own  conscience,  that  he  is  indebted  for  becoming  the  most 
virtuous  of  men,  and  the  wisest  and  purest,  next  to  Socrates, 
of  the  moralists  of  antiquity.  His  Meditations  show  us  in 

1  The  exact  reading  is  as  follows  :  "For  the  mind  requires  not  like  an 
earthen  vessel  to  be  filled  up  ;  convenient  fuel  and  aliment  only  will  influ- 
ence it  with  a  desire  of  knowledge  and  ardent  love  of  truth."     (Morals,  I. 
p.  463.)    This  makes  the  author's  meaning  more  apparent.     (P.) 

2  This  does  not  mean  that  Plutarch  sets  a  low  value  on  memory,  for  he 
says  :  "  Above  all  things,  we  must  exercise  the  memory  of  children,  for  it 
i3  the  treasury  of  knowledge." 


EDUCATION   AT   ROME.  59 

action  that  self-education  which  in  our  time  has  suggested 
such  beautiful  reflections  to  Channing. 

G7.  CONCLUSION. — Finally,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
Roman  literature  is  poor  in  material  for  educational  study. 
Some  passages,  scattered  here  and  there  in  the  classical 
authors,  nevertheless  prove  that  they  were  not  absolutely 
strangers  to  pedagogical  questions. 

Thus  Horace  professed  independence  of  mind ;  he  declares 
that  he  is  not  obliged  to  swear  by  the  "  words  of  any  mas- 
ter." l  On  the  other  hand,  Juvenal  defined  the  ideal  purpose 
of  life  and  of  education  when  he  said  that  the  desirable  thing 
above  all  others  is  u  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body." : 
Finally,  Pliny  the  Younger,  in  three  words,  multum,  non 
multa,  "  much,  not  many  things,"  fixes  one  essential  point  in 
educational  method,  and  recommends  the  thorough  study  of 
one  single  subject  in  preference  to  a  superficial  study  which 
extends  over  too  many  subjects. 

While  by  their  taste,  their  accuracy  of  thought,  and  the 
perfection  of  their  style,  the  Latin  writers  are  worthy  of 
being  placed  by  the  side  of  the  Greeks  as  proficients  in  edu- 
cation of  the  literary  type,  they  at  the  same  time  deserve  to 
be  regarded  as  reputable  guides  in  moral  education.  At 
Rome,  as  at  Athens,  that  which  formed  the  basis  of  instruc- 
tion was  the  search  after  virtue.  That  which  preoccupied 
Cicero  as  well  as  Plato,  Seneca  as  well  as  Aristotle,  was  not 
so  much  the  extension  of  knowledge  and  the  development  of 
instruction  as  the  progress  of  manners  and  the  moral  per- 
fection of  man. 

[68.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  In  contrast  with  Greek 
education,  the  chief  characteristic  of  which  was  intellectual 

1  " Ntdlius  addictits  jtirare  in  verba  mayistri." 

2  "  Orandum  est  ut  sit  mens  sana  in  corpore  sano."    (Sat.  x.  356.) 


60  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

discipline  or  culture,  Roman  education  may  be  called  prac- 
tical. Greece  and  Rome  have  thus  furnished  the  world  with 
two  distinct  types  of  education,  and  their  modern  representa- 
tives are  seen  in  our  classical  and  scientific  courses  respec- 
tively. 

2.  The  disinclination  of  the  Roman  mind  to  speculative 
inquiry,  was  a  bar  to  the  production  of  any  contributions  to 
the  theory  of  education. 

3.  In  the  Institutes  of  Quintilian  we  see  the  first  attempt  to 
expound  the  art  of  teaching ;  and  in  the  Morals  of  Plutarch 
we  have  the  first  formal  treatise  on  the  education  of  children. 

4.  In  the  later  period  of  Roman  education,  we  see  a  higher 
appreciation  of   woman,   and   a   nobler   conception   of    the 
family  life. 

5.  In  common  with  all  the  systems  of  education  thus  far 
i  studied,  Roman  education  is  essentially  literary,  ethical,  and 

prudential,  as  distinguished  from  an  education  in  science. 
The  conception  of  the  money  value  of  knowledge  had  not  yet 
appeared.] 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   EAKLY   CHRISTIANS    AND   THE  MIDDLE   AGE. 

THE  NEW  SPIRIT  OF  CHRISTIANITY;  THE  POVERTY  OF  THE  EARLY 
CHRISTIAN  CENTURIES  IN  RESPECT  OF  EDUCATION  ;  THE  FATHERS 
OF  THE  CHURCH;  SAINT  JEROME  AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS; 
PHYSICAL  ASCETICISM  J  INTELLECTUAL  AND  MORAL  ASCETICISM  J  PER- 
MANENT TRUTHS;  INTELLECTUAL  FEEBLENESS  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGE; 

CAUSES  OF  THE  IGNORANCE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGE  J  THE  THREE  RENA- 
SCENCES ;  CHARLEMAGNE  J  ALCUIN  ;  THE  SUCCESSORS  OF  CHARLE- 
MAGNE ;  SCHOLASTICISM;  ABELARD;  THE  SEVEN  LIBERAL  ARTS; 

METHODS  AND  DISCIPLINE  ;  THE  UNIVERSITIES  ;  GERSON  ;  VITTORINO 
DA  FELTRE  J  OTHER  TEACHERS  AT  THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGE; 
RECAPITULATION  ;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


69.  THE  NEW  SPIRIT  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  —  By  its  dogmas, 
by  the  conception  of  the  equality  of  all  human  creatures,  by 
its  spirit  of  charity,  Christianity  introduced  new  elements 
into  the  conscience,  and  seemed  called  to  give  a  powerful 
impetus  to  the  moral  education  of  men.  The  doctrine  of 
Christ  was  at  first  a  reaction  of  free  will  and  of  personal 
dignity  against  the  despotism  of  the  State.  "A  full  half  of 
man  henceforth  escaped  the  action  of  the  State.  Christian- 
ity taught  that  man  no  longer  belonged  to  society  except  in 
part ;  that  he  was  under  allegiance  to  it  by  his  body  and  his 
material  interests  ;  that  being  subject  to  a  tyrant,  he  must 
submit ;  that  as  a  citizen  of  a  republic,  he  ought  to  give  his 
life  for  it ;  but  that  in  respect  of  his  soul,  he  was  free,  and 
owed  allegiance  only  to  God."  l  Henceforth  it  was  not  sim- 
ply a  question  of  training  citizens  for  the  service  of  the  State  ; 

1  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  La  Cite  antique,  p.  476. 


62  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

but  the  conception  of  a  disinterested  development  of  the 
human  person  made  its  appearance  in  the  world.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  proclaiming  that  all  men  had  the  same  destiny, 
and  that  they  were  all  equal  in  the  sight  of  God,  Christianity 
raised  the  poor  and  the  disinherited  from  their  condition  of 
misery,  and  promised  them  all  the  same  instruction.  To  the 
idea  of  liberty  was  added  that  of  equality  ;  and  equal  jus- 
tice for  all,  and  participation  in  the  same  rights,  were  con- 
tained in  germ  in  the  doctrine  of  Christianity. 

70.  POVERTY  OF  THE  FIRST  CHRISTIAN  CENTURIES  IN  RE- 
SPECT OF  EDUCATION. — Nevertheless,  the  germs  contained 
in  the  doctrines  of  the  new  religion  did  not  bear  fruit  at 
once.  It  is  easy  to  analyze  the  causes  which  led  to  the  pov- 
erty of  educational  thought  during  the  first  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Christian  instruction  was  addressed 
to  barbarous  peoples  who  could  not  at  once  rise  to  a  high 
intellectual  and  moral  culture.  According  to  the  celebrated 
comparison  of  Jouffroy,  the  invasion  of  the  barbarians  into 
the  midst  of  ancient  society  was  like  an  armful  of  green 
wood  thrown  upon  a  blazing  fire  ;  at  first  there  could  issue 
from  it  only  a  mass  of  smoke. 

Moreover,  we  must  take  into  account  the  fact  that  the 
earl}'  Christians,  in  order  to  establish  their  faith,  had  to 
struggle  against  difficulties  which  were  ever  being  renewed. 
The  first  centuries  were  a  period  of  struggle,  of  conquest, 
and  of  organization,  which  left  but  little  opportunity  for  the 
disinterested  study  of  education.  In  their  contests  with  the 
ancient  world,  the  early  Christians  came  to  include  in  a  com- 
mon hatred  classical  literature  and  pagan  religion.  Could 
they  receive  with  sympathy  the  literary  and  scientific  inheri- 
tance of  a  society  whose  morals  they  repudiated,  and  whose 
beliefs  they  were  bent  on  destroying  ? 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      63 

On  the  other  hand,  the  social,  condition  of  the  men  who 
first  attached  themselves  to  the  new  religion  turned  them 
aside  from  the  studies  which  are  a  preparation  for  real  life. 
Obliged  to  conceal  themselves,  to  betake  themselves  to  the 
desert,  true  Pariahs  of  the  pagan  world,  they  lived  a  life  of 
contemplation  ;  they  were  naturally  led  to  conceive  an  as- 
cetic and  monastic  existence  as  the  ideal  of  education. 

Moreover,  by  its  mystical  tendencies,  Christianity  at  the 
first  could  not  be  a  good  school  for  a  practical  and  humane 
system  of  education.  The  Christian  was  detached  from  the 
commonwealth  of  man,  only  to  enter  into  the  commonwealth 
of  God.  '  He  must  break  with  a  corrupt  and  perverse  world. 
By  privations,  and  by  the  renunciation  of  every  pleasure,  he 
must  react  against  the  immorality  of  Grseco-Roman  society. 
Man  must  aspire  to  imitate  God  ;  and  God  is  absolute  holi- 
ness, the  very  negation  of  all  the  conditions  of  earthly  life, — 
supreme  perfection.  The  very  disproportion  between  such  an 
ideal  and  human  weakness  as  an  actual  fact  must  have  be- 
trayed the  early  Christians  into  leading  a  mystical  life  which 
was  but  a  preparation  for  death.  And  the  consequence  of 
these  doctrines  was  to  make  of  the  Church  the  exclusive 
mistress  of  education  and  instruction.  Individual  initiative, 
if  called  into  play,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the  fundamental  doc- 
trines of  Christianity,  was  stifled,  on  the  other,  under  the 
domination  of  the  Church. 

71.  THE  FATHEKS  OF  THE  CHURCH.  —  Of  the  celebrated 
doctors  who,  by  their  erudition  and  eloquence,  if  not  by 
their  taste,  made  illustrious  the  beginning  of  Christianity, 
some  were  jealous  mystics  and  sectaries,  in  whose  e^-es  phil- 
osophical curiosity  was  a  sin,  and  the  love  of  letters  a  heresy  ; 
and  others  were  Christians  of  a  conciliatory  temperament, 
who.  in  a  certain  measure,  allied  religious  faith  and  literary 
culture. 


64  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Tertnllian  rejected  all  pagan  education.  He  saw  in  classi- 
cal culture  only  a  robbery  from  God  ;  a  road  to  the  false  and 
arrogant  wisdom  of  the  ancient  philosophers.  Even  Saint 
Augustine,  who  in  his  youth  could  not  read  the  fourth  book 
of  the  ^Eneid  without  shedding  tears,  and  who  had  been  devo- 
tedly fond  of  ancient  poetry  and  eloquence,  renounced,  after 
his  conversion,  his  literary  tastes  as  well  as  the  mad  passions 
of  his  early  manhood.  It  was  by  his  influence  that  the 
Council  of  Carthage  forbade  the  bishops  to  read  the  pagan 
authors. 

This  was  not  the  course  of  Saint  Basil,  who  demands,  on 
the  contrar}',  that  the  young  Christian  shall  be  conversant 
with  the  orators,  poets,  and  historians  of  antiquity ;  who 
thinks  that  the  poems  of  Homer  inspire  a  love  for  virtue  ; 
and  who  desires,  finally ,  that  full  use  should  be  made  of  the 
treasures  of  ancient  wisdom  in  the  training  of  the  3'oung.1 
Nor  was  this  the  thought  of  Saint  Jerome,  who  said  he 
would  be  none  the  less  a  Ciceronian  in  becoming  a  Christian. 

72.  SAINT  JEROME  AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS. — The 
letters  of  Saint  Jerome  on  the  education  of  girls  form  the 
most  valuable  educational  document  of  the  first  centuries  of 
Christianity.2  They  have  excited  high  admiration.  Eras- 
mus knew  them  by  heart,  and  Saint  Theresa  read  selections 
from  them  every  day.  It  is  impossible,  to-day,  while  admir- 
ing certain  parts  of  them,  not  to  condemn  the  general  spirit 
which  pervades  them,  —  a  narrow  spirit,  distrustful  of  the 
world,  which  pushes  the  religious  sentiment  even  to  mysti- 
cism, and  disdain  for  human  affairs  to  asceticism. 

1  See  the  Homily  of  Saint  Basil  On  the  Utility  ichich  the  youny  can  de- 
rive from  the  reading  of  profane  authors. 

2  Letter  to  Lseta  on  the  education  of  her  daitr/hter  Paula  (403).    Letter 
to  Gaudentius  on  the  education  of  the  little  Pacatitla.    The  letter  to  Gau- 
dentius  is  far  inferior  to  the  other  by  reason  of  the  perpetual  digressions 
into  which  the  author  permits  himself  to  be  drawn. 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      65 

73.  PHYSICAL  ASCETICISM. — It  is  no  longer  the  question 
of  giving  power  to  the  body,  and  thus  of  making  of  it  the 
robust  instrument  of  a  cultured  spirit,  as  the  Greeks  would 
have  it.     The  body  is  an  enemy  that  must  be  subdued  by 
fasting,  by  abstinence,  and  by  mortifications  of  the  flesh. 

"•  Do  not  allow  Paula  to  eat  in  public,  that  is,  do  not  let 
her  take  part  in  family  entertainments,  for  fear  that  she 
may  desire  the  meats  that  may  be  served  there.  Let  her 
learn  not  to  use  wine,  for  it  is  the  source  of  all  impurity. 
Let  her  food  be  vegetables,  and  only  rarely  of  fish ;  and 
let  her  eat  so  as  always  to  be  hungry." 

Contempt  for  the  body  is  carried  so  far  that  cleanliness  is 
almost  interdicted. 

"  For  myself,  I  entirely  forbid  a  young  girl  to  bathe." 

It  is  true  that,  alarmed  at  the  consequences  of  such  aus- 
terity, Saint  Jerome,  by  way  of  exception,  permits  children 
the  use  of  the  bath,  of  wine,  and  of  meat,  but  only  "when 
necessity  requires  it,  and  lest  the  feet  may  fail  them  before 
having  walked." 

74.  INTELLECTUAL    AND    MORAL    ASCETICISM. — For   the 
mind,  as  well  as  for  the  body,  we  may  say  of  Saint  Jerome 
what  Nicole  wrote  to  a  nun  of  his  time:   "You  feed  your 
pupils  on  bread  and  water."     The  Bible  is  the  only  book 
recommended,  and  this  is  little  ;  but  it  is  the  Bible  entire, 
which  is  too  much.      The  Song  of  Songs,  with  its   sensual 
imagery,  would  be  strange  reading  for  a  young  girl.     The 
arts,  like  letters,  find  no  favor  with  the  mysticism  of  Saint 
Jerome. 

' '  Never  let  Paula  listen  to  musical  instruments  ;  let  her 
even  be  ignorant  of  the  uses  served  by  the  flute  and  the 
harp." 

As  for  the  flute,  which  the  Greek  philosophers  also  did 
not  like,  let  it  be  so  ;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  this  condem- 


66  '  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

nation  of  the  harp,  the  instrument  of  David  and  the  angels, 
and  of  religious  music  itself !  How  far  we  are,  in  common 
with  Saint  Jerome,  from  that  complete  life,  from  that  harmo- 
nious development  of  all  the  faculties,  which  modern  educa- 
tors, Herbert  Spencer,  for  example,  present  to  us  with 
reason  as  the  ideal  of  education !  Saint  Jerome  goes  so  far 
as  to  proscribe  walking  :  — 

"  Do  not  let  Paula  be  found  in  the  ways  of  the  world 
(emphatic  paraphrase  for  streets),  in  the  gatherings  and  in 
the  company  of  her  kindred;  let  her  be  found  only  in 
retirement." 

The  ideal  of  Saint  Jerome  is  a  monastic  and  cloistered  life, 
even  in  the  world.  But  that  which  is  graver  still,  that  which 
is  the  fatal  law  of  mysticism,  is  that  Saint  Jerome,  after 
having  proscribed  letters,  arts,  and  necessary  and  legitimate 
pleasures,  even  brings  his  condemnation  to  bear  on  the  most 
honorable  sentiments  of  the  heart.  The  heart  is  human 
also,  and  everything  human  is  evil  and  full  of  danger : 

"  Do  not  allow  Paula  to  feel  more  affection  for  one  of  her 
companions  than  for  others  ;  do  not  allow  her  to  speak  with 
such  a  one  in  an  undertone."  And  as  he  held  in  suspicion 
even  the  affections  of  the  family,  the  Doctor  of  the  Church 
concludes  thus :  — 

"  Let  her  be  educated  in  a  cloister,  where  she  will  not 
know  the  world,  where  she  will  live  as  an  angel,  having  a 
body  but  not  knowing  it,  and  where,  in  a  word,  you  will  be 
spared  the  care  of  watching  over  her.  ...  If  you  will  send  us 
Paula,  I  will  charge  myself  with  being  her  master  and  nurse  ; 
I  will  give  her  my  tenderest  care ;  my  old  age  will  not  pre- 
vent me  from  untying  her  tongue,  and  I  shall  be  more  re- 
nowned than  the  philosopher  Aristotle,  since  I  shall  instruct, 
not  a  mortal  and  perishable  king,  but  an  immortal  spouse  of 
the  Heavenly  King." 


THE  EAKLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      67 

75.  PERMANENT   TRUTHS.  —  The   pious    exaggerations   of 
Saint  Jerome  only  throw  into  sharper  relief  the  justice  and 
the  excellence  of  some  of  his  practical  suggestions,  —  upon 
the  teaching  of  reading,  for  example,  or  upon  the  necessity 
of  emulation  :  — 

';  Put  into  the  hands  of  Paula  letters  in  wood  or  in  ivory, 
and  teach  her  the  names  of  them.  She  will  thus  learn  while 
playing.  But  it  will  not  suffice  to  have  her  merely  memorize 
the  names  of  the  letters,  and  call  them  in  succession  as  they 
stand  in  the  alphabet.  You  should  often  mix  them,  putting 
the  last  first,  and  the  first  in  the  middle. 

"Induce  her  to  construct  words  by  offering  her  a  prize, 
or  by  giving  her,  as  a  reward,  what  ordinarily  pleases  chil- 
dren of  her  age.  .  .  .  Let  her  have  companions,  so  that  the 
commendation  she  may  receive  may  excite  in  her  the  feeling 
of  emulation.  Do  not  chide  her  for  the  difficult}-  she  may 
have  in  learning.  On  the  contrary,  encourage  her  by  com- 
mendation, and  proceed  in  such  a  way  that  she  shall  be 
equally  sensible  to  the  pleasure  of  having  done  well,  and  to 
the  pain  of  not  having  been  successful.  .  .  .  Especially  take 
care  that  she  do  not  conceive  a  dislike  for  study  that  might 
follow  her  into  a  more  advanced  age."1 

-( 

76.  INTELLECTUAL  FEEBLENESS  OF   THE   MIDDLE  AGE.  — 

If  the  early  doctors  of  the  Church  occasionally  expressed 
some  sympathy  for  profane  letters,  it  is  because,  in  their 
youth,  before  having  received  baptism,  they  had  themselves 
attended  the  pagan  schools.  But  these  schools  once  closed, 
Christianity  did  not  open  others,  and,  after  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, a  profound  night  enveloped  humanity.  The  labor  of 
the  Greeks  and  the  Romans  was  as  though  it  never  had 

1  For  writing,  Saint  Jerome,  like  Qnintilian,  recommends  that  children 
first  practise  on  tablets  of  wood  on  which  letters  have  been  engraved. 


68  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

been.  The  past  no  longer  existed.  Humanity  began  anew. 
In  the  fifth  century,  Apollinaris  Sidonius  declares  that 
"  the  young  no  longer  study,  that  teachers  no  longer  have 
pupils,  and  that  learning  languishes  and  dies."  Later,  Lupus 
of  Ferrieres,  the  favorite  of  Louis  the  Pious  and  Charles  the 
Bald,  writes  that  the  study  of  letters  had  almost  ceased.  In 
the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century,  the  Bishop  of  Laon, 
Adalberic,  asserts  that  "there  is  more  than  one  bishop  who 
cannot  count  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  on  his  fingers."  In 
1291,  of  all  the  monks  in  the  convent  of  Saint  Gall,  there 
was  not  one  who  could  read  and  write.  It  was  so  difficult 
to  find  notaries  public,  that  acts  had  to  be  passed  verbally. 
The  barons  took  pride  in  their  ignorance.  Even  after  the 
efforts  of  the  twelfth  century,  instruction  remained  a  luxury 
for  the  common  people  ;  it  was  the  privilege  of  the  ecclesias- 
tics, and  even  they  did  not  carry  it  very  far.  The  Benedic- 
tines confess  that  the  mathematics  were  studied  only  for  the 
purpose  of  calculating  the  date  of  Easter. 

77.  CAUSES  OF  THE  IGNORANCE  OF  '  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.  — 
What  were  the  permanent  causes  of  that  situation  which 
lasted  for  ten  centuries?  The  Catholic  Church  has  some- 
times been  held  responsible  for  this.  Doubtless  the  Chris- 
tian doctors  did  not  always  profess  a  very  warm  sympathy 
for  intellectual  culture.  Saint  Augustine  had  said:  "It  is 
the  ignorant  who  gain  possession  of  heaven  (indocti  codum 
rapiunt}."  Saint  Gregory  the  Great,  a  pope  of  the  sixth 
century,  declared  that  he  would  blush  to  have  the  holy  word 
conform  to  the  rules  of  grammar.  Too  many  Christians,  in 
a  word,  confounded  ignorance  with  holiness.  Doubtless, 
towards  the  seventh  century,  the  darkness  still  hung  thick 
over  the  Christian  Church.  Barbarians  invaded  the  Episco- 
pate, and  carried  with  them  their  rude  manners.  Doubtless, 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      69 

also,  during  the  feudal  period  the  priest  often  became 
soldier,  aud  remained  ignorant.  It  would,  however,  be  un- 
just to  bring  a  constructive  charge  against  the  Church  of  the 
Middle  Age,  and  to  represent  it  as  systematically  hostile  to 
instruction.  Directly  to  the  contrary,  it  is  the  clergy  who, 
in  the  midst  of  the  general  barbarism,  preserved  some  ves- 
tiges of  the  ancient  culture.  The  only  schools  of  that  period 
are  the  episcopal  and  claustral  schools,  the  first  annexed  to 
the  bishops'  palaces,  the  second  to  the  monasteries.  The 
religious  orders  voluntarily  associated  manual  labor  with 
mental  labor.  As  far  back  as  530,  Saint  Benedict  founded 
the  convent  of  Monte  Cassino,  and  drew  up  statutes  which 
made  reading  and  intellectual  labor  a  part  of  the  daily  life 
of  the  monks. 

In  1179,  the  third  Lateran  Council  promulgated  the  follow- 
ing decree :  — 

"  The  Church  of  God,  being  obliged  like  a  good  and  ten- 
der mother  to  provide  for  the  bodily  and  spiritual  wants  of 
the  poor,  desirous  to  procure  for  poor  children  the  oppor- 
tunity for  learning  to  read,  and  for  making  advancement  in 
study,  orders  that  each  cathedral  shall  have  a  teacher  charged 
with  the  gratuitous  instruction  of  the  clergy  of  that  church, 
and  also  of  the  indigent  scholars,  and  that  he  be  assigned  a 
benefice,  which,  sufficient  for  his  subsistence,  may  thus  open 
the  door  of  the  school  to  the  studious  youth.  A  tutor  l  shall 
be  installed  in  the  other  churches  and  in  the  monasteries 
where  formerly  there  were  funds  set  apart  for  this  purpose." 

It  is  not,  then,  to  the  Church  that  we  must  ascribe  the 

1  Ecoh'ttre.  The  history  of  this  word,  as  given  by  Littre,  is  instructive. 
"There  was  no  cathedral  church  (sixteenth  century)  iu  which  a  sum  was 
not  appropriated  for  the  salary  of  one  who  taught  the  ordinary  subjects, 
and  another  for  one  who  had  leisure  for  teaching  Theology.  The  first  was 
called  cfwUmtre  (e'cohitre'),  the  second  tkeoloyal."  Pasquier.  (P.) 


70  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

general  intellectual  torpor  of  the  Middle  Age.  Other  causes 
explain  that  long  slumber  of  the  human  mind.  The  first  is 
the  social  condition  of  the  people.  Security  and  leisure,  the 
indispensable  conditions  for  study,  were  completely  lacking 
to  people  always  at  war,  overwhelmed  in  succession  by  the 
barbarians,  the  Normans,  the  English,  and  by  the  endless 
struggles  of  feudal  times.  The  gentlemen  of  the  time 
aspired  only  to  ride,  to  hunt,  and  to  figure  in  tournaments 
and  feats  of  arms.  Physical  education  was  above  all  else 
befitting  men  whose  favorite  vocation,  both  by  habit  and 
necessit}',  was  war.  On  the  other  hand,  the  enslaved  peo- 
ple did  not  suspect  the  utility  of  instruction.  In  order  to 
comprehend  the  need  of  study,  that  great  liberator,  one 
must  already  have  tasted  liberty.  In  a  society  where  the 
need  of  instruction  had  not  yet  been  felt,  who  could  have 
taken  the  initiative  in  the  work  of  instructing  the  people  ? 

Let  us  add  that  the  Middle  Age  presented  still  other  con- 
ditions unfavorable  for  the  propagation  of  instruction,  in 
particular,  the  lack  of  national  languages,  those  necessary 
vehicles  of  education.  The  vernacular  languages  are  the  in- 
struments of  intellectual  emancipation.  Among  a  people 
where  a  dead  language  is  supreme,  a  language  of  the  learned, 
accessible  only  to  the  select  few,  the  lower  classes  necessarily 
remain  buried  in  ignorance.  Moreover,  Latin  books  them- 
selves were  rare.  Lupus  of  Ferrieres  was  obliged  to  write 
to  Rome,  and  to  address  himself  to  the  Pope  in  person,  in 
order  to  procure  for  his  use  a  work  of  Cicero's.  Without 
books,  without  schools,  without  any  of  the  indispensable 
implements  of  intellectual  labor,  what  could  be  done  for  the 
mental  life  ?  It  took  refuge  in  certain  monasteries ;  erudi- 
tion flourished  only  in  narrow  circles,  with  a  privileged  few, 
and  the  rest  of  the  nation  remained  buried  in  an  obscure 
night. 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      71 

78.  THE   THREE   RENASCENCES.  —  It  has  been  truly  said 
that  there  were  three  Renascences  :  the  first,  which  owed  its 
beginning  to  Charlemagne,  and  whose  brilliancy  did  not  last ; 
the  second,  that  of  the  twelfth  century,  the  issue  of  which 
was  Scholasticism  ;  and  the  third,  the  great  Renaissance  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  which  still  lasts,  and  which  the  French 
Revolution  has  completed. 

79.  CHARLEMAGNE.  — Charlemagne  undoubtedly  formed  the 
purpose  of   diffusing  instruction  about  him.     He   ardently 
sought  it  for  himself,  drilled  himself  in  writing,  and  learned 
Latin  and  Greek,  rhetoric  and  astronomy.     He  would  have 
communicated  to  all  who  were  about  him  the  same  ardor  for 
study.     "  Ah  !  that  I  had  twelve  clerics,"  he  exclaimed,  "  as 
perfectly  instructed  as  were  Jerome  and  Augustine  !  "     It 
was  naturally  upon  the  clergy  that  he  counted,  to  make  of 
them   the   instruments    of   his   plans ;    but,   as  one   of   his 
capitularies  of  788  shows,  there  was  need  that  the  clergy 
themselves  should  be  reminded  of  the  need  of  instruction : 
"We  have  thought  it  useful  that,  in  the  bishops'  residences, 
and  in  the  monasteries,  care  be  taken  not  only  to  live  accord- 
ing to  the  rules  of  our  holy  religion,  but,  in  addition,  to  teach 
the  knowledge  of  letters  to  those  who  are  capable  of  learning 
them  by  the  aid  of  our  Lord.     Although  it  avails  more  to 
practise  the  law  than  to  know  it,  it  must  be  known  before  it 
can    be    practised.      Several    monasteries    having    sent    us 
manuscripts,  we  have  observed  that,  in  the  most  of  them, 
the   sentiments    were   good,    but   the   language   bad.      We 
exhort  you,  then,  not  only  not  to  neglect  the  study  of  letters, 
but  to  devote  yourselves  to  them  with  all  your  power." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  nobles  did  not  make  any  great 
effort  to  justify  their  social  rank  by  the  degree  of  their 
knowledge.  One  day,  as  Charlemagne  entered  a  school, 


72  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

displeased  with  the  indolence  and  the  ignorance  of  the  young 
barons  who  attended  it,  he  addressed  them  in  these  severe 
terms:  "Do  you  count  upon  your  birth,  and  do  you  feel  a 
pride  in  it?  Take  notice  that  you  shall  have  neither  govern- 
ment nor  bishoprics,  if  you  are  not  better  instructed  than 
others." 

80.  ALCUIN  (735-804). — Charlemagne  was  seconded  in 
his  efforts  by  Alcuin  of  England,  of  whom  it  might  be  said, 
that  he  was  the  first  minister  of  public  instruction  in  France. 
It  is  he  who  founded  the  Palatine  school,  a  sort  of  imperial 
and  itinerant  academy  which  followed  the  court  on  its 
travels.  It  was  a  model  school,  where  Alcuin  had  for  his 
pupils  the  four  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Charlemagne,  and 
Charlemagne  himself,  always  eager  to  be  instructed. 

Alcuin's  method  was  not  without  originality,  but  it  is  a 
great  mistake  to  say  that  it  resembles  the  method  of  Socrates. 
Alcuin  doubtless  proceeds  by  interrogation  ;  but  here  it  is 
the  pupil  who  interrogates,  and  the  teacher  who  responds. 

"  What  is  speech?  asks  Pepin,  the  eldest  son  of  Charle- 
magne. It  is  the  interpreter  of  the  soul,  replies  Alcuiu. 
"What  is  life?  It  is  an  enjoyment  for  some,  but  for  the 
wretched  it  is  a  sorrow,  a  waiting  for  death.  What  is 
sleep?  The  image  of  death.  What  is  writing?  It  is  the 
guardian  of  history.  What  is  the  body?  The  tenement 
of  the  soul.  What  is  day?  A  summons  to  labor."1 

All  this  is  either  commonplace  or  artificial.  The  senten- 
tious replies  of  Alcuin  may  be  fine  maxims,  fit  for  embellish- 
ing the  memory ;  but  in  this  procedure  of  the  mere  scholar. 
affected  by  the  over-refinements  of  his  time,  there  is  nothing 
which  can  call  into  activity  the  intelligence  of  the  pupil. 

1  For  other  examples,  seethe  Life  of  Alcuin,  by  Lorenz  ;  ami  for  Middle 
Age  education  in  general,  consult  Christian  Schools  and  Scholar,*,  by 
Augusta  Theodosia  Drane.  (P.) 


THE  EAKLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      73 

Nevertheless  the  name  of  Alcuin   marks  an   era  in  the 
history  of  education.     His  was  the  first  attempt  to  form  an 
alliance  between  classical  literature  and  Christian  inspiration, 
—  to  create  a  "  Christian  Athens,"  according  to  the  emphatic   / 
phrase  of  Alcuin  himself. 

81.  THE  SUCCESSORS  OF  CHARLEMAGNE. — It  had  been  the 
ambition  of  Charlemagne  to  reign  over  a  civilized  society, 
rather  than  over  a  barbarous  people.  Convinced  that  the 
only  basis  of  political  unit}'  is  a  unity  of  ideas  and  of  morals, 
he  thought  to  find  the  basis  of  that  moral  unity  in  religion, 
and  religion  itself  he  purposed  to  establish  upon  a  more 
widely  diffused  system  of  instruction.  But  these  ideas  were 
too  advanced  for  the  time,  and  their  execution  too  difficult 
for  the  circumstances  then  existing.  A  new  decadence  fol- 
lowed the  era  of  Charlemagne.  The  clergy  did  not  respond 
to  the  hopes  which  the  great  emperor  had  placed  on  them. 
As  far  back  as  817,  the  Council  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  decided 
that  henceforth  no  more  day-pupils  should  be  received  into 
the  conventual  schools,  for  the  reason  that  too  large  a  num- 
ber of  pupils  would  make  impossible  the  maintenance  of  the 
monastic  discipline.  No  one  of  Charlemagne's  successors 
seems  to  have  taken  up  the  thought  of  the  great  emperor ; 
no  one  of  them  was  preoccupied  with  the  problems  of  educa- 
tion. It  is  upon  despotic  authority,  and  not  upon  the  intel- 
lectual progress  of  their  subjects,  that  those  unintelligent 
rulers  wished  to  found  their  power.  Under  Louis  the  Pious 
and  Charles  the  Bald  there  were  constructed  more  castles 
than  schools. 

The  kings  of  France  were  far  from  imitating  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  king,  Alfred  the  Great  (849-901),  to  whom  tradition 
ascribes  these  two  sayings:  "The  English  ought  alwa3's  to 
be  free,  as  free  as  their  own  thoughts";  ';  Free-born  sons 
should  know  how  to  read  and  write." 


74  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

82.  SCHOLASTICISM. — It  was  not  till  the  twelfth  century 
that  the  human  mind  was  awakened.  That  was  the  age  of 
Scholasticism,  the  essential  character  of  which  was  the  study 
of  reasoning,  and  the  practice  of  dialectics,  or  syllogistic 
reasoning.  The  syllogism,  which  reaches  necessary  con- 
clusions from  given  premises,  was  the  natural  instrument  of 
an  age  of  faith,  when  men  wished  simply  to  demonstrate 
immutable  dogmas,  without  ever  making  an  innovation  on 
established  beliefs.  It  has  often  been  observed  that  the  art 
of  reasoning  is  the  science  of  a  people  still  in  the  early  stage 
of  its  progress  ;  we  might  almost  say  of  a  barbarous  people. 
A  subtile  dialectic  is  in  perfect  keeping  with  manners  still 
rude,  and  with  a  limited  state  of  knowledge.  It  is  only  an 
intellectual  machine.  It  was  not  then  a  question  of 
original  thinking.  All  that  was  necessary  was  simply  to 
reason  upon  conceptions  already  acquired,  and  the  sacred 
depository  of  these  was  kept  in  charge  by  Theology.  Con- 
sequently, there  was  no  independent  science.  Philosophy, 
according  to  the  language  of  the  times,  was  but  the  humble 
servant  of  Theology.  The  dialectics  of  the  doctors  of  the 
Middle  Age  was  but  a  subtile  commentary  on  the  sacred 
books  and  on  the  doctrines  of  Aristotle.1  It  seems,  says 
Locke,  to  see  the  inertness  of  the  Middle  Age,  that  God  was 
pleased  to  make  of  man  a  two-footed  animal,  while  leaving 
to  Aristotle  the  task  of  making  him  a  thinking  being.  From 
his  point  of  view,  an  able  educator  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  Abbe"  Fleury,  pronounces  this  severe  judgment  on 
the  scholastic  method  :  — 

1  The  following  quotation  illustrates  this  servile  dependence  on  authority: 
"  At  the  time  when  the  discovery  of  spots  on  the  sun  first  hegan  to  circu- 
late, a  student  called  the  attention  of  his  old  professor  to  the  rumor,  and 
received  the  following  reply:  '  There  can  be  no  spots  on  the  sun,  for  I  have 
read  Aristotle  twice  from  beginning  to  end,  and  he  says  the  sun  is  incor- 
ruptible. Clean  your  lenses,  and  if  the  spots  are  not  in  the  telescope,  they 
must  be  in  your  eyes  !'"  Naville,  La  Loyique  de  V Hypothese.  (P.) 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      75 

"  This  way  of  philosophizing  on  words  and  thoughts,  with- 
out examining  the  things  themselves,  was  certainly  an  easy 
way  of  getting  along  without  a  knowledge  of  facts,  which 
can  be  acquired  only  b}-  reading  "  (Fleury  should  have  added 
and  by  observation)  ;  "  and  it  was  an  easy  way  of  dazzling 
the  ignorant  laics  by  peculiar  terms  and  vain  subtilties." 

But  Scholasticism  had  its  hour  of  glory,  its  erudite  doc- 
tors, its  eloquent  professors,  chief  among  whom  was  Abelard. 

83.  ABELARD    (1079-1142). — A   genuine  professor   of 
higher  instruction,  Abelard,  by  the  prestige  of  his  eloquence, 
gathered  around  him  at  Paris  thousands  of  students.     Hu- 
man speech,  the  living  words  of  the  teacher,  had  then  an 
authority,   an  importance,   which  it  has  lost  in  part  since 
books,  everywhere  distributed,   have,   to  a  certain  extent, 
superseded  oral  instruction.     At  a  time  when  printing  did 
not  exist,  when  manuscript  copies  were  rare,  a  teacher  who 
combined  knowledge  with  the  gift  of  speech  was  a  phenome- 
non of  incomparable  interest,  and  students  flocked  from  all 
parts  of  Europe  to  take  advantage  of  his  lectures.     Abelard\ 
is  the  most  brilliant  representative  of  the  scholastic  pedagogy,  j 
with  an  original  and  personal  tendency  towards  the  emanci'' 
pation  of  the  mind.     "  It  is  ridiculous,"  he  said,  "  to  preach 
to  others  what  we  can  neither  make  them  understand,  nor 
understand   ourselves."      With   more    boldness    than   Saint 
Anselm,  he  applied  dialectics  to  theology,  and  attempted  to 
reason  out  the  grounds  of  his  faith. 

84.  THE  SEVEN  LIBERAL  ARTS. — The  seven  liberal  arts 
constituted  what  may  be  called  the  secondary  instruction  of 
the  Middle  Age,  such  as  was  given  in  the  claustral  or  con- 
ventual schools,  and  later,  in  the  universities.     The  liberal 
arts  were  distributed  into  two  courses  of  study,  known  as  the 
1  rid  am  and  the  quadrivium.     The  trivium  comprised  gram- 
mar  (Latin  grammar,  of  course),  dialectics,  or  logic,  and 


76  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

rhetoric ;  and  the  quadrivium,  music,  arithmetic,  geometry, 
and  astronomy.  It  is  important  to  note  the  fact  that  this 
programme  contains  only  abstract  and  formal  studies,  —  no 
real  and  concrete  studies.  The  sciences  which  teach  us  to 
know  man  and  the  world,  such  as  history,  ethics,  the  physical 
and  natural  sciences,  were  omitted  and  unknown,  save  per- 
haps in  a  few  convents  of  the  Benedictines.  Nothing  which 
can  truly  educate  man,  and  develop  his  faculties  as  a  whole, 
enlists  the  attention  of  the  Middle  Age.  From  a  course  of 
study  thus  limited  there  might  come  skillful  reasouers  and 
men  formidable  in  argument,  but  never  fully  developed  men.1 

85.  METHODS  AND  DISCIPLINE.  —  The  methods  employed 
in  the  ecclesiastical  schools  of  the  Middle  Age  were  in  accord 
with  the  spirit  of  the  times,  when  men  were  not  concerned 
about  liberty  and  intellectual  freedom  ;  and  when  they  thought 
more  about  the  teaching  of  dogmas  than  about  the  training 
of  the  intelligence.  The  teachers  recited  or  read  their 
lectures,  and  the  pupils  learned  by  heart.  The  discipline 
was  harsh.  Corrupt  human  nature  was  distrusted.  In  1363, 
pupils  were  forbidden  the  use  of  benches  and  chairs,  on  the 
pretext  that  such  high  seats  were  an  encouragement  to  pride. 
For  securing  obedience,  corporal  chastisements  were  used 
and  abused.  The  rod  is  in  fashion  in  the  fifteenth  as  it  was 
in  the  fourteenth  century. 

"  There  is  no  other  difference,"  says  an  historian,  "  except 
that  the  rods  in  the  fifteenth  century  are  twice  as  long  as 
those  in  the  fourteenth."-  Let  us  note,  however,  the  pro- 
test of  Saint  Anselm,  a  protest  that  pointed  out  the  evil 
rather  than  cured  it.  "Day  and  night,"  said  an  abbot  to 

1  This  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  that  the  education  of  an  age  is  the  ex- 
ponent of  its  real  or  supposed  needs.     (P.) 

2  Monteil,  Histoire  des  Fran';ais  des  divers  etats. 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      77 

Saint  Anselm,  "we  do  not  cease  to  chastise  the  children 
confided  to  our  care,  and  they  grow  worse  and  worse." 
Ansehu  replied,  "Indeed!  You  do  not  cease  to  chastise 
them  !  And  when  they  are  grown  up,  what  will  they  become? 
Idiotic  and  stupid.  A  fine  education  that,  which  makes 
brutes  of  men  !  .  .  .  If  you  were  to  plant  a  tree  in  your 
garden,  and  were  to  enclose  it  on  all  sides  so  that  it  could 
not  extend  its  branches,  what  would  you  find  when,  at  the  end 
of  several  years,  you  set  it  free  from  its  bands?  A  tree 
whose  branches  would  be  bent  and  crooked  ;  and  would  it 
not  be  your  fault,  in  having  so  unreasonably  confined  it?  " 

86.  THE   UNIVERSITIES.  —  Save    claustral    and    cathedral 
schools,  to  which  must  be  added  some  parish  schools,  the 
earliest  example  of  our  village  schools,  the  sole  educational 
establishment  of  the  Middle  Age  was  what  is  called  the  Uni- 
riTxity.     Towards  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  century  we 
see  multiplying  in  the  great  cities  of  Europe  those  centres  of 
study,  those  collections  of  students  which  recall  from  afar 
the  schools  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.     Of  such  establishments 
were  the  university  which  opened  at  Paris  for  the  teaching 
of   theology   and   philosophy    (1200);    the    universities   of 
Naples   (1224),   of  Prague   (1345),  of  Vienna    (1365),  of 
Heidelberg  (1386),  etc.1     Without  being  completely  affran- 
chised from  sacerdotal  control,  these  universities  were  a  first 
expansion  of  free  science.     As  far  back  as  the  ninth  century, 
the  Arabs  had  given  an  example  to  the  rest  of  Europe  by 
founding  at  Salamanca,  at  Cordova,  and  in  other  cities  of 
Spain,  schools  where  all  the  sciences  were  cultivated. 

87.  GERSON  (1363-1429).  — With  the  gentle  Gerson,  the 
supposed  author  of  the  Imitation,  it  seems  that  the  dreary  dia- 

i  Cambridge  (1109),  Oxford  (1140). 


78  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

lecties  disappear  to  let  the  heart  speak  and  make  way  for 
feeling.  The  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Paris  is  distin- 
guished from  the  men  of  his  time  by  his  love  for  the  people. 
He  wrote  in  the  common  tongue  little  elementary  treatises 
for  the  use  and  within  the  comprehension  of  the  plain  people. 
His  Latin  work,  entitled  De  parvulis  ad  Christum  trahendis 
("Little  children  whom  we  must  lead  to  Christ "),  gives 
evidence  of  a  large  spirit  of  sweetness  and  goodness.  It 
abounds  in  subtile  and  delicate  observations.  For  exam- 
ple, Gerson  demands  of  teachers  patience  and  tenderness : 
"Little  children,"  he  says,  "  are  more  easily  managed  by 
caresses  than  by  fear."  For  these  frail  creatures  he  dreads 
the  contagion  of  example.  "  No  living  being  is  more  in 
danger  than  the  child  of  allowing  himself  to  be  corrupted  by 
another  child."  In  his  eyes,  the  little  child  is  a  delicate 
plant  that  must  be  carefully  protected  against  every  evil  in- 
fluence, and,  in  particular,  against  pernicious  literature,  such 
as  the  Roman  de  la  Rose.  Gerson  condemns  corporal  punish- 
ment, and  requires  that  teachers  shall  have  for  their  pupils 
the  affection  of  a  father  :  — 

"  Above  all  else,  let  the  teacher  make  an  effort  to  be  a 
father  to  his  pupils.  Let  him  never  be  angry  with  them. 
Let  him  always  be  simple  in  his  instruction,  and  relate  to  his 
pupils  that  whicli  is  wholesome  and  agreeable."  Tender- 
hearted and  exalted  spirit,  Gerson  is  a  precursor  of  Fenelon.1 

88.   VITTORINO  DA  FELTRE  (1379-1446). — It  is  a  pleas- 
ure to  place  beside  Gerson  one  of  his  Italian  contemporaries, 
(  the  celebrated  Vittorino  da  Feltre,  a  professor  in  the  Uni- 
\versity  of  Padua.     It  was  as  preceptor  to  the  sons  of  the 

1  In  the  Traite  de  la  visile  des  dioceses,  in  1400,  he  directed  the  bishops  to 
inquire  whether  each  parish  had  a  school,  and,  in  case  there  were  none,  to 
establish  one. 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.      79 

Prince  of  Gonzagas,  and  as  founder  of  an  educational  estab- 
lishment at  Venice,  that  Vittorino  found  occasion  to  show 
his  aptitude  for  educational  work.  With  him,  education 
again  became  what  it  was  in  Greece,  —  the  harmonious  devel- 
opment of  mind  and  body.  Gymnastic  exercises,  such  as 
swimming,  riding,  fencing,  restored  to  honor ;  attention  to 
the  exterior  qualities  of  fine  bearing ;  an  interesting  and 
agreeable  method  of  instruction  ;  a  constant  effort  to  discover 
the  character  and  aptitudes  of  children ;  a  conscientious 
preparation  for  each  lesson  ;  assiduous  watchfulness  over  the 
work  of  pupils  ;  such  are  the  principal  features  of  the  peda- 
gogy of  Vittorino  da  Feltre,  a  system  of  teaching  evidently 
in  advance  of  his  time,  and  one  which  deserves  a  longer 
study. 

89.  OTHER  TEACHERS  AT  THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGE. 
—  Were  we  writing  a  work  of  erudition,  there  would  be 
other  thinkers  to  point  out  in  the  last  years  of  the  Middle 
Age,  in  that  uncertain  and,  so  to  speak,  twilight  period 
which  serves  as  a  transition  from  the  night  of  the  Middle 
Age  to  the  full  day  of  the  Renaissance.  Among  others,  let 
us  notice  the  Chevalier  de  la  Tour-Landry  and  ./Eneas  Sylvius 
Ficcolomini. 

The  Chevalier  de  la  Tour-Landry,  in  the  work  which  he 
wrote  for  the  education  of  his  daughters  (1372),  scarcely  rises 
above  the  spirit  of  his  time.  Woman,  as  he  thinks,  is  made 
to  pray  and  to  go  to  church.  The  model  which  he  sets  be- 
fore his  daughters  is  a  countess,  who  "  each  day  wished  to 
hear  three  masses."  He  recommends  fasting  three  times  a 
week  in  order  "  the  better  to  subdue  the  flesh,"  and  to  pre- 
vent it  "  from  diverting  itself  too  much."  There  is  neither 
responsibility  nor  proper  dignity  for  the  wife,  who  owes 
obedience  to  her  husband,  her  lord,  and  "  should  do  his  will, 


80  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

whether  wrong  or   right ;    if  wrong,  she  is  absolved  from 
blame,  as  the  blame  falls  on  her  lord." 

JEneas  Sylvius,  the  future  Pope  Pius  II.,  in  his  tract  on 
The  Education  of  Children  (1451),  is  already  a  man  of  the 
Renaissance,  since  he  recommends  with  enthusiasm  the  read- 
ing and  study  of  most  of  the  classical  authors.  However, 
he  traces  a  programme  of  studies  relatively  liberal.  By  the 
side  of  the  humanities  he  places  the  sciences  of  geometry 
and  arithmetic,  "  which  are  necessary,"  he  says,  ''  for  train- 
ing the  mind  and  assuring  rapidity  of  conceptions "  ;  and 
also  history  and  geography.  He  had  himself  composed  his- 
torical narratives  accompanied  by  maps.  The  distrusts  of 
an  overstrained  devotion  were  no  longer  felt  by  a  teacher 
who  wrote,  "  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  more  precious 
or  more  beautiful  than  an  enlightened  intelligence." 

90.  RECAPITULATION.  —  It  is  thus  that  the  Middle  Age  in 
drawing  to  a  close  came  nearer  and  nearer,  in  the  way  of 
continuous  progress,  to  the  decisive  emancipation  which  the 
Renaissance  and  the  Reformation  were  soon  to  perpetuate. 
But  the  Middle  Age,  in  itself,  whatever  effort  may  be  put 
forth  at  this  day  to  rehabilitate  it,  and  to  discover  in  it 
the  golden  age  of  modern  societies,  remains  an  ill-starred 
epoch.  A  few  virtues,  negative  for  the  most  part,  virtues 
of  obedience  and  consecration,  cannot  atone  for  the  real 
faults  of  those  rude  and  barbarous  centuries.  A  higher 
education  reserved  to  ecclesiastics  and  men  of  noble  rank ; 
an  instruction  which  consisted  in  verbal  legerdemain,  which 
developed  only  the  mechanism  of  reasoning,  and  made  of 
the  intelligence  a  prisoner  of  the  formal  syllogism  ;  agreea- 
bly to  the  barbarism  of  primitive  times,  a  fantastic  pedantry 
which  lost  itself  in  superficial  discussions  and  in  verbal 
distinctions ;  popular  education  almost  null,  and  restricted  to 


THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  AND  THE  MIDDLE  AGE.       81 

the  teaching  of  the  catechism  in  Latin  ;  finally,  a  Church, 
absolute  and  sovereign,  which  determined  for  all,  great  and 
small,  the  limits  of  thought,  of  belief,  and  of  action  ;  such 
was,  from  our  own  point  of  view,  the  condition  of  the  Mid- 
dle Age.  It  was  time  for  the  coming  of  the  Renaissance  to 
affranchise  the  human  mind,  to  excite  and  to  reveal  to  itself 
the  unconscious  need  of  instruction,  and  by  the  fruitful 
alliance  of  the  Christian  spirit  and  profane  letters,  to  prepare 
for  the  coming  of  modern  education. 

x 

[91.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  fundamental  char- 
acteristic of  Middle  Age  education  was  the  domination  of 
religious  conceptions.  The  training  was  for  the  life  to  come, 
rather  than  for  this  life  ;  it  was  almost  exclusively  religious 
and  moral ;  was  based  on  authority  ;  and  included  the  whole 
human  race. 

2.  This  alliance  of  church  and   school,  while  giving  an 
exclusive  aim  to  education,  also  gave  it  a  spirit  of  intense 
seriousness  and  earnestness.     The  survivals  of  this  histori- 
cal alliance  are  church  and  parish  schools,  and  a  disposition 
of  the  modern  Church  to  dispute  the  right  of  the  State  to 
educate. 

3.  The   supreme  importance    attached  to   the    Scriptures 
made   education   literary ;    made    instruction   dogmatic   and 
arbitrary  ;  exalted  words  over  things  ;  inculcated  a  taste  for 
abstract  and  formal  reasoning ;  made  learning  a  process  of 
memorizing  ;  and  stifled  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry. 

4.  The    inclusion  of   the   whole  world    in   one   Christian 
Commonwealth,  led    to   the  intellectual    enfranchisement  of 
woman  and  to  the  rise  of  primar}'  education  proper. 

5.  The  general  tendency  was  towards  harshness  in  disci- 
pline, coarseness  in  habits  and  manners,  and  a  contempt  for 
the  amenities  of  life. 


82  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

6.  Scholasticism  erred  by  exaggeration ;  but  its  general 
effect  was  to  develop  the  power  of  deductive  reasoning,  to 
teach  the  use  of  language  as  the  instrument  of  thought,  and 
to  make  apparent  the  need  of  nice  discriminations  in  the  use 
of  words. 

7.  The   great   intellectual   lesson  taught  is  the  extreme 
difficulty  of  attaining  compass,  symmetry,  and  moderation.] 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE  RENAISSANCE  AND  THE  THEORIES  OF  EDUCATION 
IN  THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY. 

GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SIXTEENTH 
CENTURY;  CAUSES  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  EDUCATION;  THE 
THEORY  AND  THE  PRACTICE  OF  EDUCATION  IN  THE  SIXTEENTH 
CENTURY;  ERASMUS  (1467-1536);  EDUCATION  OF  ERASMUS;  THE 
JEROMITES  ;  PEDAGOGICAL  WORKS  OF  ERASMUS  ;  JUVENILE 
ETIQUETTE  J  EARLY  EDUCATION  ;  THE  INSTRUCTION  OF  WOMEN  ; 
RABELAIS  (1483-1553);  CRITICISM  OF  THE  OLD  EDUCATION;  GAR- 
OANTUA  AND  EUDEMON  J  THE  NEW  EDUCATION  ;  PHYSICAL  EDU- 
CATION J  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  ;  THE  PHYSICAL  AND  NATURAL 
SCIENCES;  OBJECT  LESSONS;  ATTRACTIVE  METHODS;  RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION;  MORAL  EDUCATION;  MONTAIGNE  (1533-1592)  AND 
RABELAIS  ;  THE  PERSONAL  EDUCATION  OF  MONTAIGNE  J  EDU- 
CATION SHOULD  BE  GENERAL  ;  THE  PURPOSE  OF  INSTRUCTION  ; 
EDUCATION  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  ;  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS  J  STUDIES 
RECOMMENDED  J  MONTAIGNE'S  ERRORS  ;  INCOMPLETENESS  OF  HIS 
VIEWS  ON  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  J  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


92.  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  EDUCATION  OF 
THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY.  —  Modern  education  begins  with 
the  Renaissance.  The  educational  methods  that  we  then 
begin  to  discern  will  doubtless  not  be  developed  and 
perfected  till  a  later  period ;  the  new  doctrines  will  pass 
into  practice  only  gradually,  and  with  the  general  progress 
of  the  times.  But  from  the  sixteenth  century  education 
is  in  possession  of  its  essential  principles.  The  educa- 
tion of  the  Middle  Age,  over-rigid  and  repressive,  which 
condemned  the  body  to  a  regime  too  severe,  and  the 
mind  to  a  discipline  too  narrow,  is  to  be  succeeded, 


84  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

at  least  in  theory,  by  an  education  broader  and  more 
liberal ;  which  will  give  due  attention  to  hygiene  and 
physical  exercises  ;  which  will  enfranchise  the  intelligence, 
hitherto  the  prisoner  of  the  syllogism  ;  which  will  call  into 
play  the  moral  forces,  instead  of  repressing  them ;  which 
will  substitute  real  studies  for  the  verbal  subtilties  of  dia- 
lectics ;  which  will  give  the  preference  to  things  over  words  ; 
which,  finally,  instead  of  developing  but  a  single  faculty,  the 
reason,  and  instead  of  reducing  man  to  a  sort  of  dialectic 
automaton,  will  seek  to  develop  the  whole  man,  mind  and 
body,  taste  and  knowledge,  heart  and  will. 

93.  CAUSES  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  EDUCATION.  —  The 
men  of  the  sixteenth  century  having  renewed  with  classical 
antiquity  an  intercourse  that  had  been  too  long  interrupted, 
it  was  natural  that  they  should  propose  to  the  young  the 
study  of  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans.  What  is  called 
secondary  instruction  really  dates  from  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  crude  works  of  the  Middle  Age  are  succeeded  l»y 
the  elegant  compositions  of  Athens  and  Rome,  henceforth 
made  accessible  to  all  through  the  art  of  printing ;  and.  with 
the  reading  of  the  ancient  authors,  there  reappear  through  the 
fruitful  effect  of  imitation,  their  qualities  of  correctness  in 
thought,  of  literary  taste,  and  of  elegance  in  form.  In 
France,  as  in  Italy,  the  national  tongues,  moulded,  and. 
as  it  were,  consecrated  by  writers  of  genius,  become  the 
instruments  of  an  intellectual  propaganda.  Artistic  taste. 
revived  by  the  rich  products  of  a  race  of  incomparable  artists, 
gives  an  extension  to  the  horizon  of  life,  and  creates  a  new 
class  of  emotions.  Finally,  the  Protestant  Reform  develops 
individual  thought  and  free  inquiry,  and  at  the  same  time. 
by  its  success,  it  imposes  still  greater  efforts  on  the  Catholic 
Church. 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  85 

This  is  not  saying  that  everything  is  faultless  in  the  edu- 
cational efforts  of  the  sixteenth  century.  First,  as  is  natural 
for  innovators,  the  thought  of  the  teachers  of  this  period  is 
marked  by  enthusiasm  rather  than  by  precision.  They  are 
more  zealous  in  pointing  out  the  end  to  be  attained,  than 
exact  in  determining  the  means  to  be  employed.  Besides, 
some  of  them  are  content  to  emancipate  the  mind,  but  forget 
to  give  it  proper  direction.  Finally,  others  make  a  wrong 
use  of  the  ancients  ;  they  are  too  much  preoccupied  with  the 
form  and  the  purity  of  language  ;  they  fall  into  Ciceromania, 
and  it  is  not  their  fault  if  a  new  superstition,  that  of  rhetoric, 
does  not  succeed  the  old  superstition,  that  of  the  syllogism. 

94.  THE  THEORY  AND  THE  PRACTICE  OF  EDUCATION  IN 
THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY.  —  In  the  history  of  education  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  we  must,  moreover,  carefully  distinguish 
the  theory  from  the  practice.  The  theory  of  education  is 
already  boldly  put  forward,  and  is  in  advance  of  its  age  ; 
while  the  practice  is  still  dragging  itself  painfully  along  on 
the  beaten  road,  notwithstanding  some  successful  attempts 
at  improvement. 

The  theory  we  must  look  for  in  the  works  of  Erasmus, 
Rabelais,  and  Montaigne,  of  whom  it  may  be  said,  that  before 
pretending  to  surpass  them,  even  at  this  day,  we  should 
rather  attempt  to  overtake  them,  and  to  equal  them  in  the 
most  of  their  pedagogical  precepts. 

The  practice  is,  first,  the  development  of  the  study  of  the 
humanities,  particularly  in  the  early  colleges  of  the  Jesuits, 
and,  before  the  Jesuits,  in  certain  Protestant  colleges,  partic- 
ularly in  the  college  at  Strasburg,  so  brilliantly  administered 
bj-  the  celebrated  Sturm  (1507-1589).  Then  it  is  the  revival 
of  higher  instruction,  denoted  particularly  by  the  foundation 
of  the  College  of  France  (1530),  and  by  the  brilliant  lee- 


86  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tures  of  Ramus.  Finally,  it  is  the^  progress,  we  might 
almost  say  the  birth,  of  primary  instruction,  through  the 
efforts  of  the  Protestant  reformers,  and  especially  of  Luther. 
Nevertheless,  the  educational  thought  of  the  sixteenth 
century  is  in  advance  of  educational  practice ;  theories 
greatly  anticipate  applications,  and  constitute  almost  all  that 
is  deserving  of  special  note. 

95.  ERASMUS   (1467—1536). — By  his  numerous  writings, 
translations,    grammars,    dictionaries,    and   original   works, 
Erasmus  diffused  about  him  his  own  passionate  fondness  for 
classical  literature,  and  communicated  this  taste  to  his  con- 
temporaries.   Without  having  a  direct  influence  on  education, 
since  he  scarcely  taught  himself,  he  encouraged  the  study  of 
the  ancients  by  his  example,  and  by  his  active  propagan- 
dism.     The  scholar  who  said,  "  When  I  have  money,  I  will 
first  buy  Greek  books  and  then   clothes,"    deserves   to   be 
placed  in  the  first  rank  among  the  creators  of  secondary 
instruction. 

96.  THE    EDUCATION    OF    ERASMUS  :    THE    JEROMITES.  — 
Erasmus  was  educated  by  the  monks,  as  Voltaire  was  by  the 
Jesuits,  a  circumstance  that  has  cost  these  liberal  thinkers 
none   of   their  independent   disposition,  and  none  of   their 
satirical  spirit.     At  the  age  of  twelve,  Erasmus  entered  the 
college  of   Deventer,  in   Holland.     This   college  was   con- 
ducted by  the  Jeromites,  or  Brethren  of  the  Common  Life. 
Founded  in  1340  by  Gerard  Groot,  the  association  of  the 
Jeromites  undertook,  among  other  occupations,  the  instruc- 
tion of  children.     Very  mystical,  and  very  ascetic  at  first, 
the  disciples  of  Gerard  Groot  restricted  themselves  to  teach- 
ing the  Bible,  to  reading,  and  writing.     They  proscribed,  as 
useless   to   piety,    letters   and    the    sciences.       But    in    the 
fifteenth  century,  under  the  influence  of  John  of  Wessel  and 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  87 

Rudolph  Agricola,  the  Jeromites  became  transformed  ;  they 
were  the  precursors  of  the  Renaissance,  and  the  promoters 
of  the  alliance  between  profane  letters  and  Christianity. 
'k  We  may  read  Ovid  once,"  said  John  of  Wessel,  "  but  we 
ought  to  read  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Terence,  with  more  atten- 
tion." Horace  and  Terence  were  precisely  the  favorite 
authors  of  Erasmus,  who  learned  them  by  heart  at  Deven- 
ter.  Agricola,  of  whom  Erasmus  speaks  only  with  enthu- 
siasm, was  also  the  zealous  propagator  of  the  great  works 
of  antiquity,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  severe  critic  of  the 
state  of  educational  practice  of  the  time  when  the  school 
was  too  much  like  a  prison. 

"  If  there  is  anything  which  has  a  contradictory  name," 
he  said,  "  it  is  the  school.  The  Greeks  called  it  o^cAr),  which 
means  leisure,  recreation;  and  the  Latins,  Indus,  that  is, 
play.  But  there  is  nothing  farther  removed  from  recreation 
and  play.  Aristophanes  called  it  <£/3ovTicrr?/piov,  that  -is, 
place  of  care,  of  torment,  and  this  is  surely  the  designation 
which  best  befits  it." 

Erasmus  then  had  for  his  first  teachers  enlightened  men, 
who,  notwithstanding  their  monastic  condition,  both  knew 
and  loved  antiquity.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Erasmus 
was  his  own  teacher.  By  personal  effort  he  put  himself  at 
the  school  of  the  ancients.  He  was  all  his  life  a  student. 
Now  he  was  a  foundation  scholar  at  the  college  of  Montaigu, 
in  Paris,  and  now  preceptor  to  gentlemen  of  wealth.  He 
was  always  in  pursuit  of  learning,  going  over  the  whole  of 
Europe,  that  he  might  find  in  each  cultivated  city  new  oppor- 
tunities for  self-instruction. 

97.  PEDAGOGICAL  WORKS  OF  ERASMUS. — Most  of  the 
works  written  by  Erasmus  relate  to  instruction.  Some  of 
them  are  fairly  to  be  classed  as  text-books,  elementary 
treatises  on  practical  education,  as,  for  example,  his  books 


88  THE    HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

On  the  Manner  of  writing  Letters,  Upon  Rules  of  Etiquette 
for  the  Young,  etc.  We  may  also  notice  his  Adages,  a  vast 
repertory  of  proverbs  and  maxims  borrowed  from  antiquity  ; 
his  Colloquies,  a  collection  of  dialogues  for  the  use  of  the 
young,  though  the  author  here  treats  of  many  things  which 
a  pupil  should  never  hear  spoken  of.  Another  category 
should  include  works  of  a  more  theoretical  character,  in 
which  Erasmus  sets  forth  his  ideas  on  education.  In  the 
essay  On  the  Order  of  Study  (de  Ratione  Studii) ,  he  seeks  out 
the  rules  for  instruction  in  literature,  for  the  study  of  gram- 
mar, for  the  cultivation  of  the  memory,  and  for  the  explica- 
tion of  the  Greek  and  Latin  authors.  Another  treatise, 
entitled  Of  the  First  Liberal  Education  of  Children  (De  pueris 
statim  ac  liberaliter  instituendis) ,  is  still  more  important,  and 
covers  the  whole  field  of  education.  Erasmus  here  studies 
the  character  of  the  child,  the  question  of  knowing  whether 
the  first  years  of  child-life  can  be  turned  to  good  account, 
and  the  measures  that  are  to  be  taken  with  early  life.  He 
also  recommends  methods  that  are  attractive,  and  heartily 
condemns  the  barbarous  discipline  which  reigned  in  the 
schools  of  his  time. 

98.  JUVENILE  ETIQUETTE. — Erasmus  is  one  of  the  first 
educators  who  comprehended  the  importance  of  politeness. 
In  an  age  still  uncouth,  where  the  manners  of  even  the  cul- 
tivated classes  tolerated  usages  that  the  most  ignorant  rustic 
of  to-day  would  scorn,  it  was  good  to  call  the  attention  to 
outward  appearances  and  the  duties  of  politeness.  Eras- 
mus knew  perfectly  well  that  politeness  has  a  moral  side, 
that  it  is  not  a  matter  of  pure  convention,  but  that  it  pro- 
ceeds from  the  inner  disposition  of  a  well-ordered  soul.  So 
he  assigns  it  an  important  place  in  education : 

"  The  duty  of  instructing  the  young,"  he  says,  "  includes 
several  elements,  the  first  and  also  the  chief  of  which  is, 


THE  RENAISSANCE.  89 

-       - 

that  the  tender  mind  of  the  child  should  be  instructed  in 
piety ;  the  second,  that  he  love  and  learn  the  liberal  arts ; 
the  third,  that  he  be  taught  tact  in  the  conduct  of  social 
life  ;  and  the  fourth,  that  from  his  earliest  age  he  accustom 
himself  to  good  behavior,  based  on  moral  principles." 

We  need  not  be  astonished,  however,  to  find  that  the 
civility  of  Erasmus  is  still  imperfect,  now  too  free,  now  too 
exacting,  and  always  ingenuous.  "It  is  a  religious  duty," 
he  says,  "  to  salute  him  who  sneezes."  "  Morally  speaking, 
it  is  not  a  proper  thing  to  throw  the  head  back  while  drink- 
ing, after  the  manner  of  storks,  in  order  to  drain  the  last 
drop  from  the  glass."  "  If  one  let  bread  fall  on  the  ground, 
he  should  kiss  it  after  having  picked  it  up."  On  the  other 
hand,  Erasmus  seems  to  allow  that  the  nose  may  be  wiped 
with  the  fingers,  but  he  forbids  the  use  of  the  cap  or  the 
sleeve  for  this  purpose.  He  requires  that  the  face  shall  be 
bathed  with  pure  water  in  the  morning;  "but,"  he  adds, 
"  to  repeat  this  afterwards  is  nonsense." 

99.  EARLY  EDUCATION.  —  Like  Quintilian,  by  whom  he  is 
often  inspired,  Erasmus  does  not  scorn  to  enter  the  primary 
school,  and  to  shape  the  first  exercises  for  intellectual  cul- 
ture. Upon  many  points,  the  thought  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury scholar  is  but  an  echo  of  the  Institutes  of  Oratory,  or 
of  the  educational  essays  of  Plutarch.  Some  of  his  maxims 
deserve  to  be  reproduced  :  ' '  We  learn  with  great  willingness 
from  those  whom  we  love;"  "Parents  themselves  cannot 
properly  bring  up  their  children  if  they  make  themselves 
only  to  be  feared;"  "There  are  children  who  would  be 
killed  sooner  than  made  better  by  blows  :  by  mildness  and 
kind  admonitions,  one  may  make  of  them  whatever  he 
will;"  "Children  will  learn  to  speak  their  native  tongue 
without  any  weariness,  by  usage  and  practice  ;  "  "  Drill  in 
reading  and  writing  is  a  little  bit  tiresome,  and  the  teacher 


90  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

will  ingeniously  palliate  the  tedium  by  the  artifice  of  an 
attractive  method;"  "The  ancients  moulded  toothsome 
dainties  into  the  forms  of  the  letters,  and  thus,  as  it  were, 
made  children  swallow  the  alphabet;"  "In  the  matter  of 
grammatical  rules,  instruction  should  at  the  first  be  limited 
to  the  most  simple  ; "  "As  the  body  in  infant  years  is  nour- 
ished by  little  portions  distributed  at  intervals,  so  should 
the  mind  of  the  child  be  nurtured  by  items  of  knowledge 
adapted  to  its  weakness,  and  distributed  little  by  little." 

From  out  these  quotations  there  appears  a  method  of 
instruction  that  is  kindly,  lovable,  and  full  of  tenderness  for 
the  young.  Erasmus  claims  for  them  the  nourishing  care 
and  caresses  of  the  mother,  the  familiarity  and  goodness  of 
the  father,  cleanliness,  and  even  elegance  in  the  school,  and 
finally,  the  mildness  and  indulgence  of  the  teacher. 

100.  THE  INSTRUCTION  OF  WOMEN. — The  scholars  of 
the  Renaissance  did  not  exclude  women  from  all  participa- 
tion in  the  literary  treasures  that  a  recovered  antiquity  had 
disclosed  to  themselves.  Erasmus  admits  them  to  an  equal 
share. 

In  the  Colloquy  of  the  Abbe  and  the  Educated  Woman, 
Magdala  claims  for  herself  the  right  to  learn  Latin,  "  so  that 
she  may  hold  converse  each  day  with  so  many  authors  who 
are  so  eloquent,  so  instructive,  so  wise,  and  such  good  coun- 
sellors." In  the  book  called  Christian  Marriage.  Erasmus 
banters  young  ladies  who  learn  only  to  make  a  bow,  to  hold 
the  hands  crossed,  to  bite  their  lips  when  they  laugh,  to  eat 
and  drink  as  little  as  possible  at  table,  after  having  taken 
ample  portions  in  private.  More  ambitious  for  the  wiiV. 
Erasmus  recommends  her  to  pursue  the  studies  which  will 
assist  her  in  educating  her  own  children,  and  in  taking  part 
in  the  intellectual  life  of  her  husband. 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  91 

Vives,  a  contemporary  of  Erasmus  (1492—1540),  a  Span- 
ish teacher,  expressed  analogous  ideas  in  his  books  on  the 
education  of  women,  in  which  he  recommends  young  women 
to  read  Plato  and  Seneca. 

To  sum  up,  the  pedagogy"  of  Erasmus  is  not  without  value  ; 
but  with  him,  education  ran  the  risk  of  remaining  exclusively 
Greek  and  Latin.  A  humanist  above  everything  else,  he 
granted  but  very  small  place  to  the  sciences,  and  to  history, 
which  it  sufficed  to  skim  over,  as  he  said ;  and,  what  reveals 
his  inmost  nature,  he  recommended  the  stud}-  of  the  physical 
sciences  for  this  reason  in  particular,  that  the  writer  will  find 
in  the  knowledge  of  nature  an  abundant  source  of  metaphors, 
images,  and  comparisons. 

101.  RABELAIS  (1483-1553). — Wholly  different  is  the 
spirit  of  Rabelais,  who,  under  a  fanciful  and  original  form, 
has  sketched  a  complete  system  of  education.  Some  pages 
of  marked  gravity  in  the  midst  of  the  epic  vagabondage  of 
his  burlesque  work,  give  him  the  right  to  appear  in  the  first 
rank  among  those  who  have  reformed  the  art  of  training  and 
developing  the  human  soul.1 

The  pedagogy  of  Rabelais  is  the  first  appearance  of  what 
may  be  called  realism  in  instruction,  in  distinction  from  the 
scholastic  formalism.  The  author  of  Gargant.ua  turns  the 
mind  of  the  young  man  towards  objects  truly  worthy  of  oc- 
cupying his  attention.  He  catches  a  glimpse  of  the  future 
reserved  to  scientific  education,  and  to  the  study  of  nature. 
He  invites  the  mind,  not  to  the  labored  subtilties  and  com- 
plicated tricks  which  scholasticism  had  brought  into  fashion, 
but  to  manly  efforts,  and  to  a  wide  unfolding  of  human 
nature. 

1  See  especially  the  following  chapters:  Book  I.  chaps,  xiv.,  xv.,  xxi., 
xxii.,  xxiv.;  Book  II.  chaps,  v.,  vi.,  vn.,  vm. 


92  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

102.  CRITICISM  OF  THE  OLD  EDUCATION  :  GARGANTFA  AKD 
EUDEMON. — In  the  manners  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
keen  satire  of  Rabelais  found  raany^  opportunities  for  dis- 
porting itself  ;  and  his  book  may  be  regarded  as  a  collection 
of  pamphlets.  But  there  is  nothing  that  he  has  pursued 
with  more  sarcasms  than  the  education  of  his  day. 

At  the  outset,  Gargantua  is  educated  according  to  the 
scholastic  methods.  He  works  for  twenty  years  with  all  his 
might,  and  learns  so  perfectly  the  books  that  he  studies  that 
he  can  recite  them  by  heart,  backwards  and  forwards,  "•  and 
yet  his  father  discovered  that  all  this  profited  him  nothing  ; 
and  what  is  worse,  that  it  made  him  a  madcap,  a  ninny, 
dreamy,  and  infatuated." 

To  that  unintelligent  and  artificial  training  which  sur- 
charges the  memory,  which  holds  the  pupil  for  long  years 
over  insipid  books,  which  robs  the  mind  of  all  independent 
activity,  which  dulls  rather  than  sharpens  the  intelligence,  — 
to  all  this  Rabelais  opposes  a  natural  education,  which  appeals 
to  experience  and  to  facts,  which  trains  the  young  man,  not 
only  for  the  discussions  of  the  schools,  but  for  real  life,  and 
for  intercourse  with  the  world,  and  which,  finally,  enriches 
the  intelligence  and  adorns  the  memory  without  stifling  the 
native  graces  and  the  free  activities  of  the  spirit. 

Eudemon,  who,  in  Rabelais'  romance,  represents  the  pupil 
trained  by  the  new  methods,  knows  how  to  think  with  accu- 
racy and  speak  with  facility  ;  his  bearing  is  without  bold- 
ness, but  with  confidence.  When  introduced  to  Gargantua, 
he  turns  towards  him,  "cap  in  hand,  with  open  countenance, 
rudd}'  lips,  stead\"  eyes,  and  with  modesty  becoming  a 
youth "  ;  he  salutes  him  elegantly  and  graciously.  To  all 
the  pleasant  things  which  Eudemon  says  to  him,  Gargantua 
finds  nothing  to  say  in  reply:  "  His  countenance  appeared 
as  though  he  had  taken  to  crying  immoderately ;  he  hid  his 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  93 

face  in  his  cap,  and  not  a  single  word  could  be  drawn  from 
him." 

In  these  two  pupils,  so  different  in  manner,  Rabelais  has 
personified  two  contrasted  methods  of  education  :  that  which, 
by  mechanical  exercises  of  memory,  enfeebles  and  dulls 
the  intelligence ;  and  that  which,  with  larger  grants  of 
liberty,  develops  keen  intelligences,  and  frank  and  open 
characters. 

103.  THE    NEW    EDUCATION.  —  Let   us   now  notice  with 
some  detail   how  Rabelais   conceives   this   new  education.1 
After    having    thrown    into   sharp    relief    the    faults    con- 
tracted by  Gargantua  in  the  school  of  his  first  teachers,  he 
entrusts  him  to  a  preceptor,  Ponocrates,  who  is  charged  with 
correcting  his  faults,  and  with  re-moulding  him  ;   he  is  to 
employ  his  own  principles  in  the  government  of  his  pupil. 

Ponocrates  proceeds  slowly  at  first ;  he  considers  that 
"  nature  does  not  endure  sudden  changes  without  great 
violence."  He  studies  and  observes  his  pupil ;  he  wishes  to 
judge  of  his  natural  disposition.  Then  he  sets  himself  to 
work  ;  he  undertakes  a  general  recasting  of  the  character  and 
spirit  of  Gargantua,  while  directing,  at  the  same  time,  his 
physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  education. 

104.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION.  —  Hygiene    and   gymnastics, 
cleanliness    which    protects   the   body,  and   exercise   which 
strengthens  it,  —  these  two  essential  parts  of  physical  edu- 

1  The  contrast  between  the  general  system  of  education  that  culmin- 
ated with  the  Reformation,  and  the  system  that  had  its  rise  at  the  same 
period,  is  so  marked  that  there  is  an  historical  propriety  in  calling  the  first 
the  old  education,  and  the  second,  or  later,  the  new  education.  Recollect- 
ing the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  pass  from  one  extreme  to  an 
opposite  extreme,  we  may  suspect  that  the  final  state  of  educational 
thought  and  practice  will  represent  a  mean  between  these  two  contrasted 
systems:  it  is  inconceivable  that  the  old  was  wholly  wrong,  or  that  the 
new  is  wholly  right.  (P.) 


94  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

cation  receive  equal  attention  from  Rabelais.  Erasmus 
thought  it  was  nonsense  ("  ne  rime  d,  rien  ")  to  wash  more 
than  once  a  day.  Gargantua,  on  the  contrary,  after  eating, 
bathes  his  hands  and  his  eyes  in  fresh  water.  Rabelais  does 
not  forget  that  he  has  been  a  physician  ;  he  omits  no  detail 
relative  to  the  care  of  the  body,  even  the  most  repugnant. 
He  is  far  from  believing,  with  the  nystics  of  the  Middle 
Age,  that  it  is  permissible  to  lodge  knowledge  in  a  sordid 
bod}',  and  that  a  foul  or  neglected  exterior  is  not  unbefitting 
virtuous  souls.  The  first  preceptors  of  Gargantua  said  that 
it  sufficed  to  comb  one's  hair  "  with  the  four  fingers  and  the 
thumb ;  and  that  whoever  combed,  washed,  and  cleansed 
himself  otherwise,  was  losing  his  time  in  this  world."  With 
Ponocrates,  Gargantua  reforms  his  habits,  and  tries  to  re- 
semble Eudemon,  "  whose  hair  was  so  neatly  combed,  who 
was  so  well  dressed,  of  such  fine  appearance,  and  was  so 
modest  in  his  bearing,  that  he  much  more  resembled  a  little 
angel  than  a  man." 

Rabelais  attaches  equal  importance  to  gymnastics,  to  walk- 
ing, and  to  active  life  in  the  open  air.  He  does  not  allow 
Gargantua  to  grow  pale  over  his  books,  and  to  protract  his 
study  into  the  night.  After  the  morning's  lessons,  he  takes 
him  out  to  play.  Tennis  and  ball  follow  the  application  to 
books  :  "  He  exercises  his  body  just  as  vigorously  as  he  had 
before  exercised  his  mind."  And  so,  after  the  study  of  the 
afternoon  till  the  supper  hour,  Gargantua  devotes  his  time 
to  physical  exercises.  Riding,  wrestling,  swimming,  every 
species  of  physical  recreation,  gymnastics  under  all  its  forms, 
—  there  is  nothing  which  Gargantua  does  not  do  to  give  agility 
to  his  limbs  and  to  strengthen  his  muscles.  Here,  as  in 
other  places,  Rabelais  stretches  a  point,  and  purposely  resorts 
to  exaggeration  in  order  to  make  his  thought  better  compre- 
hended. It  would  require  days  of  several  times  twenty-four 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  95 

hours,  in  order  that  a  real  man  could  find  the  time  to  do  all 
that  the  author  of  Gargantua  requires  of  his  giant.  In  con- 
trast with  the  long  asceticism  of  the  Middle  Age,  he  proposes 
a  real  revelry  of  gymnastics  for  the  colossal  body  of  his  hero. 
We  -will  uot  forget  that  here,  as  in  all  the  other  parts  of 
Rabelais'  work,  fiction  is  ever  mingled  with  fact.  Rabelais 
wrote  for  giants,  and  it  is  natural  that  he  should  demand 
gigantesque  efforts  of  them.  In  order  to  comprehend  the 
exact  thought  of  the  author,  it  is  necessary  to  reduce  his 
fantastic  exaggerations  to  human  proportions. 

105.  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION.  —  For  the  mind,  as  for 
the  body,  Rabelais  requires  prodigies  of  activity.  Gargantua 
rises  at  four  in  the  morning,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  long 
day  is  filled  with  study.  For  the  indolent  contemplations  of 
the  Middle  Age,  Rabelais  substitutes  an  incessant  effort  and 
an  intense  activity  of  the  mind.  Gargantua  first  studies  the 
ancient  languages,  and  the  first  place  is  given  to  Greek, 
which  Rabelais  rescues  from  the  long  discredit  into  which  it 
had  fallen  in  the  Middle  Age,  as  is  proved  by  the  vulgar 
adage,  "  Grcecum  est,  non  legitur." 

"•  Now,  all  disciplines  are  restored,  and  the  languages  rein- 
stated, —  Greek  (without  which  it  is  a  shame  for  a  person 
to  call  himself  learned),  Hebrew,  Chaldean,  Latin.  There 
are  very  elegant  and  correct  editions  in  use,  which  have  been 
invented  in  my  age  by  divine  inspiration,  as,  on  the  other 
hand,  artillery  was  invented  by  diabolic  suggestion.  The 
whole  world  is  full  of  wise  men,  of  learned  teachers,  and  of 
very  large  libraries,  and  it  is  my  opinion  that  neither  in  the 
time  of  Plato  nor  in  that  of  Cicero,  nor  in  that  of  Papinian, 
were  there  such  opportunities  for  study  as  we  see  to-day." 

Like  all  his  contemporaries,  Rabelais  is  an  enthusiast  in 
classical  learning ;  but  he  is  distinguished  from  them  by  a 


96  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

very  decided  taste  for  the  sciences,  and  in  particular  for  the 
natural  sciences. 

106.  THE  PHYSICAL  AND  NATURAL  SCIENCES.  — The  Mid- 
dle Age  had  completely  neglected  the  study  of  nature.  The 
art  of  observing  was  ignored  by  those  subtile  dialecticians, 
who  would  know  nothing  of  the  physical  world  except  through 
the  theories  of  Aristotle  or  the  dogmas  of  the  sacred  books  ; 
who  attached  no  value  to  the  study  of  the  material  universe, 
the  transient  and  despised  abode  of  immortal  souls  ;  and 
who,  moreover,  flattered  themselves  that  they  could  discover 
at  the  end  of  their  syllogisms  all  that  was  necessary  to  know 
about  it.  Rabelais  is  certainly  the  first,  in  point  of  time,  of 
that  grand  school  of  educators  who  place  the  sciences  in  the 
first  rank  among  the  studies  worthy  of  human  thought. 

The  scholar  of  the  Middle  Age  knew  nothing  of  the 
world.  Gargantua  requires  of  his  son  that  he  shall  know  it 
under  all  its  aspects  : 

"  As  to  the  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  nature,"  he  writes 
to  Pantagruel,  "  I  would  have  you  devote  yourself  to  them 
with  great  care,  so  that  there  shall  be  neither  sea.  river,  nor 
fountain,  whose  fish  you  do  not  know.  All  the  birds  of  the 
air,  all  the  trees,  shrubs,  and  fruits  of  the  forests,  all  the 
grasses  of  the  earth,  all  the  metals  concealed  in  the  depths 
of  the  abysses,  the  precious  stones  of  the  entire  East  and 
South,  —  none  of  these  should  be  unknown  to  you.  By  fre- 
quent dissections,  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  other  world, 
which  is  man.  In  a  word,  I  point  out  a  new  world  of 
knowledge." 

Nothing  is  omitted,  it  is  observed,  from  what  constitutes 
the  science  of  the  universe  or  the  knowledge  of  man. 

It  is  further  to  be  noticed,  that  Rabelais  wishes  his  pupil 
not  only  to  know,  but  to  love  and  experience  nature.  He 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  97 

recommends  his  pupils  to  go  and  read  the  Georgics  of  Virgil 
in  the  midst  of  meadows  and  woods.  The  precursor  of 
Rousseau  on  this  point  as  upon  some  others,  he  thinks  there 
is  a  gain  iu  spiritual  health  by  refreshing  the  imagination  and 
giving  I'epose  to  the  spirit,  through  the  contemplation  of  the 
beauties  of  nature. 

Ponocrates,  in  order  to  afford  Gargantua  distraction  from 
his  extreme  attention  to  study,  recommended  once  each 
month  some  very  clear  and  serene  day,  on  which  they  set  out 
at  an  early  hour  from  the  city,  and  went  to  Chantilly,  or 
Boulogne,  or  Montrouge,  or  Pont  Charenton,  or  Vanues,  or 
Saint  Cloud.  And  there  they  passed  the  whole  day  in  play- 
ing, singing,  dancing,  frolicking  in  some  fine  meadow, 
hunting  for  sparrows,  collecting  pebbles,  fishing  for  frogs 
and  crabs.1 

107.  OBJECT  LESSONS.  — In  the  scheme  of  studies  planned 
by  Rabelais,  the  mind  of  the  pupil  is  always  on  the  alert, 
even  at  table.  There,  instruction  takes  place  while  talking. 
The  conversation  bears  upon  the  food,  upon  the  objects 
which  attract  the  attention  of  Gargantua,  upon  the  nature 
and  properties  of  water,  wine,  bread,  and  salt.  Every  sen- 
sible object  becomes  material  for  questions  and  explanations. 
Gargantua  often  takes  walks  across  fields,  and  he  studies 
botany  in  the  open  country,  "  passing  through  meadows  or 
other  grassy  places,  observing  trees  and  plants,  comparing 
them  with  ancient  books  where  they  are  described,  .  .  .  and 
taking  handfuls  of  .them  home."  There  are  but  few  didactic 
lessons  ;  intuitive  instruction,  given  in  the  presence  of  the 
objects  themselves,  such  is  the  method  of  Rabelais.  It  is 
in  the  same  spirit  that  he  sends  his  pupil  to  visit  the  stores 
of  the  silversmiths,  the  founderies,  the  alchemists'  labora- 

1  Book  I.  chap.  xxiv. 


98  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

tories,  and  shops  of  all  kinds,  —  real  scientific  excursions, 
such  as  are  in  vogue  to-day.  Rabelais  would  form  a  com- 
plete man,  skilled  in  art  and  industry,  and  also  capable,  like 
the  Emile  of  Rousseau,  of  devoting  himself  to  manual  labor. 
When  the  weather  is  rainy,  and  walking  impracticable,  Gar- 
gantua  employs  his  time  in  splitting  and  sawing  wood,  and 
in  threshing  grain  in  the  barn. 

108.  ATTRACTIVE  METHODS.  —  By  a  reaction  against  the 
irksome  routine  of  the  Middle  Age,  Rabelais  would  have 
his  pupil  study  while  playing,  and  even  learn  mathematics 
"•  through  recreation  aud  amusement."     It  is  in  handling 
playing-cards  that  Gargantua  is  taught  thousands  of  "  new 
inventions  which  relate  to  the  science  of  numbers."     The 
same  course  is  followed  in  geometry  and  astronomy.     The 
accomplishments  are  not  neglected,  especially  fencing.    Gar- 
gantua is  an  enormous  man,  who  is  to  be  developed  in  all 
directions.     The  fine  arts,  music,  painting,  and  sculpture,  are 
not  strangers  to  him.     The  hero  of  Rabelais  represents,  not 
so  much  an  individual  man,  as  a  collective  being  who  per- 
sonifies the  whole  of  society,  with  all  the  variety  of  its  new 
aspirations,  and  with  all  the  intensity  of  its  multiplied  needs. 
While  the  Middle  Age,  through  a  narrow  spirit,  left  in  inac- 
tion certain  natural  tendencies,  Rabelais  calls  them  all  into 
life,  without  choice,  it  is  true,  and  without  discrimination, 
with  the  whole  ardor  of  an  emancipated  imagination. 

109.  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION.  — In  respect  of  religion  as  of 
everything  else,  Rabelais  is  the  adversary  of  an  education 
wholly  exterior  and  of  pure  form.     He  ridicules  his  Gargan- 
tua, who,  before  his  intellectual  conversion,  when  he  was 
still  at  the  school  of  "  his  preceptors,  the  sophists,"  goes  to 
church,  after  a  hearty  dinner,  to  hear  twenty-six  or  thirty 
masses.    What  he  substitutes  for  this  exterior  devotion,  for 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  99 

this  abuse  of  superficial  practices,  is  a  real  feeling  of  piety, 
and  the  direct  reading  of  the  sacred  texts  :  "  It  is  while 
Gargantua  was  being  dressed  that  there  was  read  to  him  a 
page  of  Divine  Scripture."1  Still  more,  it  is  the  intimate  and 
personal  adoration  "  of  the  great  psalmodist  of  the  universe," 
excited  by  the  study  of  the  works  of  God.  Gargantua  and 
his  master,  Ponocrates,  have  scarcely  risen  when  they  observe 
the  state  of  the  heavens,  and  admire  the  celestial  vault.  In 
the  evening  they  devote  themselves  to  the  same  contempla- 
tion. After  his  meals,  as  before  going  to  sleep,  Gargantua 
offers  prayers  to  God,  to  adore  Him,  to  confirm  his  faith,  to 
glorify  Him  for  His  boundless  goodness,  to  thank  Him  for 
all  the  time  past,  and  to  recommend  himself  to  Him  for  the 
time  to  come.  The  religious  feeling  of  Rabelais  proceeds  at 
the  same  time,  both  from  the  sentiment  which  provoked  the 
Protestant  Reformation,  of  which  he  came  near  being  an 
adherent,  and  from  tendencies  still  more  modern,  —  those,  for 
example,  which  animate  the  deistic  philosoph}-  of  Rousseau. 

110.  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  Those  who  know  Rabelais  only 
by  reputation,  or  through  some  of  his  innumerable  drolleries, 
will  perhaps  be  astonished  that  the  jovial  author  can  be 
counted  a  teacher  of  morals.  It  is  impossible,  however,  to 
misunderstand  the  sincere  and  lofty  inspiration  of  such  pas- 
sages as  this : 

"  Because,  according  to  the  wise  Solomon,  wisdom  does 
not  enter  into  a  malevolent  soul,  and  knowledge  without  con- 
science is  but  the  ruin  of  the  soul ;  it  becomes  you  to  serve,  to 
love,  and  to  fear  God,  and  to  place  on  Him  all  your  thoughts, 

1  Rabelais  recommends  the  study  of  Hebrew,  so  that  the  sacred  books 
may  be  known  in  their  original  form.  In  some  place  he  says:  "  I  love  much 
more  to  hear  the  Gospel  than  to  hear  the  life  of  Saint  Margaret  or  some 
other  caut." 


100  THE   HISTO11Y   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

all  your  hopes.  ...  Be  suspicious  of  the  errors  of  the  world. 
Apply  not  your  heart  to  vanity,  for  this  life  is  transitory ; 
but  the  word  of  God  endures  forever.  Be  useful  to  all  your 
neighbors,  and  love  them  as  yourself .  Revere  your  teachers, 
flee  the  company  of  men  whom  you  would  not  resemble  ;  and 
the  grace  which  God  has  given  you  receive  not  in  vain.  And 
when  you  think  you  have  all  the  knowledge  that  can  be  ac- 
quired by  this  means,  return  to  me,  so  that  I  may  see  you, 
and  give  you  my  benediction  before  I  die." l 

111.  MONTAIGNE  (1533-1592)  AND  RABELAIS. — Between 
Erasmus,  the  learned  humanist,  exclusively  devoted  to  belles- 
lettres,  and  Rabelais,  the  bold  innovator,  who  extends  as  far 
as  possible  the  limits  of  the  intelligence,  and  who  causes  the 
entire  encyclopaedia  of  human  knowledge  to  enter  the  brain 
of  his  pupil  at  the  risk  of  splitting  it  open,  Montaigne 
occupies  an  intermediate  place,  with  his  circumspect  and 
conservative  tendencies,  with  his  discreet  and  moderate  ped- 
agogy, the  enemy  of  all  excesses.  It  seemed  that  Rabelais 
would  develop  all  the  faculties  equally,  and  place  all 
studies,  letters,  and  sciences  upon  the  same  footing.  Mon- 
taigne demands  a  choice.  Between  the  different  faculties  he 
attempts  particularly  to  train  the  judgment ;  among  the  dif- 
ferent knowledges,  he  recommends  by  preference  those  which 
form  sound  and  sensible  minds.  Rabelais  overdrives  mind 
and  body.  He  dreams  of  an  extravagant  course  of  instruc- 
tion where  every  science  shall  be  studied  exhaustively. - 

1  Book  II.  chap.  vm. 

2  This  pansophic  scheme  of  Rabelais  has  been  revived  in  later  times  by 
Bentham.  in  his  Chrestomathia.  anJ  still  later  by  Spencer,  in  his  Educa- 
tion.   It  seems  to  have  been  forgotten  that  the  division  of  labor  affects 
education  in  much  the  same  way  as  it  affects  all  other  departments  of 
human  activity:  that  there  is  no  more  need  of  having  as  a  personal  posses- 
sion all  the  knowledge  we  need  for  guidance,  than  for  owning  all  the 
agencies  we  need  for  locomotion  or  communication.     (P.) 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  101 

Montaigne    simply   demands    that    "  one    taste    the    upper 
crust  of  the  sciences  "  ;  that  one  skim  over  them  without 
going  into  them  deeply,  "  in  French  fashion."     In  his  view,  I 
a  well-made  Iiead-Ja-Hf.artli  more  than  a  head  well  lilled.     It 
is  not  so  much  to  accumulate,  to  amass,  knowledge,  as  to 
assimilate  as  much  of  it  as  a  prudent  intelligence  can  digest 
without  fatigue.     In  a  word,  while  Rabelais  sits  down,  so  to   | 
speak,  at  the  banquet  of  knowledge  with  an  avidity  which 
recalls  the  gluttony  of  the  Pantagruelian  repasts,  Montaigne    / 
is  a  delicate  connoisseur,  who  would  only  satisfy  with  dis- 
cretion a  regulated  appetite. 

112.  THE  PERSONAL  EDUCATION  OF  MONTAIGNE. — One 
often  becomes  teacher  through  recollection  of  his  personal 
education.  This  is  what  happened  to  Montaigne.  His  ped- 
agogy is  at  once  an  imitation  of  the  methods  which  a  father 
full  of  solicitude  had  himself  applied  to  him,  and  a  protest 
against  the  defects  and  the  vices  of  the  college  of  Guienne, 
which  he  entered  at  the  age  of  six  years.  The  home 
education  of  Montaigne  affords  the  interesting  spectacle  of 
a  child  who  develops  freely.  My  spirit,  he  himself  says,  was 
trained  with  all  gentleness  and  freedom,  without  severity  or 
constraint.  His  father,  skilful  in  his  tender  care,  had  him 
awakened  each  morning  at  the  sound  of  musical  instruments, 
so  as  to  spare  him  those  brusque  alarms  that  are  bad  pre- 
parations for  toil.  In  a  word,  he  applied  to  him  that  tem- 
pered discipline,  at  once  indulgent  and  firm,  equally  removed 
from  complacency  and  harshness,  which  Montaigne  has 
christened  with  the  name  of  severe  mildness.  Another  char- 
acteristic of  Montaigne's  education  is,  that  he  learned  Latin 
as  one  learns  his  native  tongue.  His  father  had  surrounded 
him  with  domestics  and  teachers  who  conversed  with  him 
only  in  Latin.  The  result  of  this  was,  that  at  the  age  of  six 
he  was  so  proficient  in  the  language  of  Cicero,  that  the  best 


102  THE  HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Latinists  of  the  time  feared  to  address  him  (craignissent  & 
I'accoster).  On  the  other  hand,  he  knew  no  more  of  French 
than  he  did  of  Arabic.1  It  is  evident  that  Montaigne's  father 
hud  taken  a  false  route,  but  at  least  Montaigne  derived  a  just 
conception  from  this  experience,  namely,  that  the  methods 
ordinarily  pursued  in  the  study  of  the  dead  languages  are  too 
slow  and  too  mechanical ;  that  an  abuse  is  made  of  rules, 
and  that  sufficient  attention  is  not  given  to  practice:  "  No 
doubt  but  Greek  and  Latin  are  very  gi'eat  ornaments,  and 
of  very  great  use,  but  we  buy  them  too  dear."2 

At  the  college  of  Guienne,  where  he  passed  seven  years, 
Montaigne  learned  to  detest  corporal  chastisements  and  the 
hard  discipline  of  the  scholars  of  his  day  :  "  .  .  .  Instead  of 
tempting  and  alluring  children  to  letters  by  apt  and  gentle 
ways,  our  pedants  do  in  truth  present  nothing  before  them 
but  rods  and  ferules,  horror  and  cruelty.  Away  with  this 
violence  !  away  with  this  compulsion  !  than  which,  I  certainly 
believe,  nothing  more  dulls  and  degenerates  a  well-descended 
nature.  .  .  .  The  strict  government  of  most  of  our  colleges 
has  evermore  displeased  me.  .  .  .  'Tis  the  true  house  of 
correction  of  imprisoned  youth.  .  .  .  Do  but  come  in  when 
they  are  about  their  lesson,  and  you  shall  hear  nothing  but 
the  outcries  of  boys  under  execution,  with  the  thundering 
noise  of  their  Pedagogues,  drunk  with  fury,  to  make  up  the 
consort.  A  pretty  way  this !  to  tempt  these  tender  and 
timorous  souls  to  love  their  book,  with  a  furious  counte- 
nance, and  a  rod  in  hand.  A  cursed  and  pernicious  way  of 

1  "  I  was  above  six  years  of  age  before  I  understood  either  French  or 
Perit/ordian  any  more  than  Arabic,  and  without  art,  book,  grammar,  or 
precept,  whipping,  or  the  experience  of  a  tear,  had  by  that  time  learned  to 
speak  as  pure  Latin  as  my  master  himself."    Essays,  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 
In  this  chapter  I  have  several  times  quoted  from  Cotton's  translation. 
(London:  1711.)     (P.) 

2  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 


THE    1IENAISSANCE.  103 

proceeding.  .  .  .  How  much  more  decent  would  it  be  to  see 
their  classes  strewed  with  green  leaves  and  fine  flowers,  than 
with  bloody  stumps  of  birch  and  willows?  Were  it  left  to 
my  ordering,  I  should  paint  the  school  with  the  pictures  of 
Joy  and  Gladness,  Flora  and  the  Graces  .  .  .  that  where 
their  profit  is,  the}7  might  have  their  pleasure  too." ' 

113.  IMPORTANCE  OF  A  GENERAL  UATHEU  THAN  A  SPECIAL 
EDUCATION.  —  If  Montaigne,  in  different  chapters  of  his 
essays,2  has  given  passing  attention  to  pedagogical  questions, 
it  is  not  only  through  a  recollection  of  his  own  years  of  ap- 
prenticeship, but  also  because  of  his  judgment  as  a  philos- 
opher, that  "  the  greatest  and  most  important  task  of  human 
understanding  is  in  those  matters  which  concern  the  nurture 
and  instruction  of  children." 

For  him,  education  is  the  art  of  forming  men,  and  not 
specialists.  This  he  explains  in  his  original  manner  under 
the  form  of  an  anecdote  : 

"  Going  to  Orleans  one  day,  I  met  in  that  plain  this  side 
C'levy,  two  pedants  who  were  going  towards  Bordeaux, 
about  fifty  paces  distant  from  one  another.  Still  further 
back  of  them,  I  saw  a  troop  of  horse,  and  at  their  head  a 
gentleman  who  was  the  late  Count  de  la  Rochefoucault.  One 
of  my  company  inquired  of  the  foremost  of  these  dominies, 
who  that  gentleman  was  who  was  following  him.  He  had 
not  observed  the  train  that  was  following  after,  and  thought 
that  the  question  related  to  his  companion ;  and  so  he 
ivplied  pleasantly,  '  He  is  not  a  gentleman,  but  a  grammarian, 
and  I  am  a  logician.'  Now,  as  we  are  here  concerned  in  the 
training,  not  of  a  grammarian,  or  of  a  logician,  but  of  a 

1  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 

2  See  particularly  Chap.  xxrv.  of  Book  I.,   Of  Pedantry ;   Chap.  xxv. 
Book  I.,  Of  the  Education  of  Children ;  Chap.  vm.  Book  II.,  Of  the  Affec- 
tion of  Fathers  to  their  Children. 


104  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

complete  gentleman,  we  will  let  those  who  will  abuse  their 
leisure  ;  but  we  have  business  of  another  nature." l 

It  is  true  that  Montaigne  says  gentleman,  and  not  simply 
man  ;  but  in  reality  his  thought  is  the  same  as  that  of  Rous- 
seau and  of  all  those  who  require  a  general  education  of  the 
human  soul. 

114.  THE  PURPOSE  OF  INSTRUCTION.  — From  what  has  now 
been  said,  it  is  easy  to  comprehend  that,  in  the  opinion  of 
Montaigne,  letters  and  other  studies  are  but  the  means  or 
instrument,  and  not  the  aim  and  end  of  instruction.     The 
author  of  the  Essays  does  not  yield  to  the  literary  craze, 
which,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  took  certain  scholars  captive, 
and  made  the  ideal  of  education  to  consist  of  a  knowledge  of 
the  ancient  languages.     It  is  of  little  consequence   to  him 
that  a  pupil  has  learned  to  write  in  Latin  ;    what  he  does 
require,  is  that  he  become  better  and  more  prudent,  and  have 
a  sounder  judgment.     ''If  his  soul  be  not  put  into  better 
rhythm,  if  the  judgment  be  not  better  settled,  I  would  rather 
have  him  spend  his  time  at  tennis."  2 

115.  EDUCATION   OF    THE    JUDGMENT.  —  Montaigne    has 
expressed  his  dominant  thought  on  education  in  a  hundred 
different  ways.     He  is  preoccupied  with  the  training  of  the 
judgment,  and  on  this  point  we  might  quote  whole  pages  : 

'•  .  .  .  According  to  the  fashion  in  which  we  are  instructed. 
it  is  not  singular  that  neither  scholars  nor  masters  become 
more  able,  although  they  become  more  wise.  In  fact,  our 
parents  devote  their  care  and  expense  to  furnishing  our  heads 
with  knowledge  ;  but  to  judgment  and  virtue  no  additions 
are  made.  Say  of  a  passer-by  to  people,  '  O  what  a  learned 
man  ! '  and  of  another,  '  O  what  a  good  man  goes  there  '.  ' 
and  they  will  not  fail  to  turn  their  eyes  and  attention  towards 

1  Book  I.  chap.  xxv.  2  Book  I.  chap.  xxiv. 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  105 

the  former.  There  should  be  a  third  to  cry,  '  O  the  block- 
heads ! '  Men  are  quick  to  inquire,  '  Does  he  know  Greek 
or  Latin?  Does  he  write  in  verse  or  in  prose?'  But 
whether  he  has  become  better  or  more  prudent,  which  is  the 
principal  thing,  this  receives  not  the  least  notice  ;  whereas 
we  ought  to  inquire  who  is  the  better  learned,  rather  than 
who  is  the  more  learned?  " 

"We  labor  only  at  filling  the  memory,  and  leave  the  under- 
standing and  the  conscience  void.  Just  as  birds  sometimes 
go  in  quest  of  grain,  and  bring  it  in  their  bills  without  tasting 
it  themselves,  to  make  of  it  mouthfuls  for  their  young ;  so 
our  pedants  go  rummaging  in  books  for  knowledge,  only  to 
hold  it  at  their  tongues'  end,  and  then  distribute  it  to  their 
pupils."1 

116.  STUDIES  RECOMMENDED.  —  The  practical  and  utili- 
tarian mind  of  Montaigne  dictates  to  him  his  programme  of 
studies.  With  him  it  is  not  a  question  of  plunging  into  the 
depths  of  the  sciences ;  disinterested  studies  are  not  his 
affair.  If  Rabelais  proposed  to  develop  the  speculative 
faculties,  Montaigne,  on  the  contrary,  is  preoccupied  with 
the  practical  faculties,  and  he  makes  everything  subordinate 
to  morals.  For  example,  he  would  have  history  learned,  not 
for  the  sake  of  knowing  the  facts,  but  of  appreciating  them. 
It  is  not  so  necessary  to  imprint  in  the  memory  of  the  child 
' '  the  date  of  the  fall  of  Carthage  as  the  character  of  Hanni- 
bal and  Scipio,  nor  so  much  where  Marcellus  died  as  why  it 
was  unworthy  of  his  duty  that  he  died  there."2 

And  so  in  philosophy,  it  is  not  the  general  knowledge  of 
man  and  nature  that  Montaigne  esteems  and  recommends  ; 
but  only  those  parts  that  have  a  direct  bearing  on  morals  and 
active  life. 

1  Book  I.  chap.  xxiv.  2  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 


106  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

''It  is  a- pity  that  matters  should  bo  at  such  a  pass  as  they 
are  in  our  time,  that  philosophy,  even  with  people  of  under- 
standing, should  be  looked  upon  as  a  vain  and  fanciful  name, 
a  thing  of  no  use  and  no  value,  either  for  opinion  or  for 
action.  I  think  that  it  is  the  love  of  quibbling  that  has 
caused  things  to  take  this  turn.  .  .  .  Philosophy  is  that 
which  teaches  us  to  live."  1 

117.  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS. — An  education  purely 
bookish  is  not  to  Montaigne's  taste.  He  counts  less  upon 
books  than  upon  experience  and  mingling  with  men ;  upon 
the  observation  of  things,  and  upon  the  natural  suggestions 
of  the  mind : 

"  For  learning  to  judge  well  and  speak  well,  whatever 
presents  itself  to  our  eyes  serves  as  a  sufficient  book.  The 
knavery  of  a  page,  the  blunder  of  a  servant,  a  table  witti- 
cism, —  all  such  things  are  so  many  new  things  to  think 
about.  And  for  this  purpose  conversation  with  men  is 
wonderfully  helpful,  and  so  is  a  visit  to  foreign  lands  .  .  . 
to  bring  back  the  customs  of  those  nations,  and  their  man- 
ners, and  to  whet  and  sharpen  our  wits  by  rubbing  them  upon 
those  of  others." 

"...  The  lesson  will  be  given,  sometimes  by  conversation, 
sometimes  by  book.  .  .  .  Let  the  child  examine  every 
man's  talent,  a  peasant,  a  mason,  a  passer-by.  Put  into  his 
head  an  honest  curiosity  in  everything.  Let  him  observe 
whatever  is  curious  in  his  surroundings,  —  a  fine  house,  a 
delicate  fountain,  an  eminent  man,  the  scene  of  an  ancient 
battle,  the  routes  of  Ca?sar,  or  of  Charlemagne.  .  .  ."  l 

Things  should  precede  words.  On  this  point  Montaigne 
anticipates  Comenius,  Rousseau,  and  all  modern  educators. 

1  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 


THE    RENAISSANCE.  107 

"Let  our  pupil  bo  provided  with  things;  words  will 
follow  only  too  fast."1 

"  The  world  is  given  to  babbling  ;  I  hardly  ever  saw  a  man 
who  did  not  rather  prate  too  much,  than  speak  too  little. 
Yet  the  half  of  our  life  goes  in  that  way  ;  we  are  kept  four  or 
five  years  in  learning  words.  .  .  ."• 

"  This  is  not  saying  that  it  is  not  a  fine  and  good  thing  to 
speak  well ;  but  not  so  good  as  it  is  made  out  to  be.  I  am 
vexed  that  our  life  is  so  much  occupied  with  all  this," 

118.  How  WE  SHOULD  HEAD. — Montaigne  has  keenly  criti- 
cised the  abuse  of  books:  "  I  would  not  have  this  boy  of 
ours  imprisoned,  and  made  a  slave  to  his  book.  ...  I  would 
not  have  his  spirit  cow'd  and  subdu'd  by  applying  him  to  the 
rack,  and  tormenting  him,  as  some  do,  fourteen  or  fifteen 
hours  a  day,  and  so  make  a  pack-horse  of  him.  Neither 
should  I  think  it  good,  when,  by  a  solitary  and  melancholic 
complexion,  he  is  discovered  to  be  much  addicted  to  his 
book,  to  nourish  that  humor  in  him,  for  that  renders  them 
unfit  for  civil  conversation,  and  diverts  them  from  better 
employments."3 

But  while  he  advises  against  excess  in  reading,  he  has 
admirably  defined  the  manner  in  which  we  ought  to  read. 
Above  all,  he  says,  let  us  assimilate  and  appropriate  what 
we  read.  Let  the  work  of  the  reader  resemble  that  of  bees, 
that,  on  this  side  and  on  that,  tap  the  flowe'rs  for  their  sweet 

1  Has  not  this  extravagant  preference  for  things,  as  distinguished  from 
words,  become  a  new  superstition  in  educational  theory?    Considering  the 
misuse  made  of  words  by  Scholasticism,  it  was  time  for  Montaigne  to  summon 
the  attention  outwards  to  sensible  realities;  but  it  is  more  than  doubtful 
whether  there  is  any  valid  ground  for  the  absolute  rule  of  modern  pedagogy, 
"  first  the  idea,  then  the  term."     In  actual  experience,  there  is  no  invariable 
sequence.  The  really  important  thing  is,  that  terms  be  made  significant.  (P.) 

2  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 

3  Book  I.  chap.  xxv. 


108  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

juices,  and  make  them  into  honey,  which  is  no  longer  thyme 
nor  marjoram.  In  other  terms,  we  should  read  with  reflec- 
tion, and  with  a  critical  spirit,  while  mastering  the  thoughts 
of  the  author  by  our  personal  judgment,  without  ever  bo- 
coming  slaves  to  them. 

119.  MONTAIGNE'S  ERRORS.  —  Montaigne's  greatest  fault,  it 
must  be  confessed,  is  that  he  is  somewhat  heartless.  Some- 
what of  an  egoist  and  Epicurean,  he  celebrates  only  the 
easy  virtues  that  are  attained  "  by  shady  routes  through 
green  meadows  and  fragrant  flowers."  Has  he  himself  ever 
performed  painful  duties  that  demand  effort?  To  love  child- 
ren, he  waits  till  they  are  amiable  ;  while  they  are  small,  he 
disdains  them,  and  keeps  them  at  a  distance  from  him  : 

"  I  cannot  entertain  that  passion  of  dandling  and  caressing 
an  infant,  scarcely  born,  having  as  yet  neither  motion  of 
soul  nor  shape  of  body  distinguishable,  by  which  they  can 
render  themselves  amiable  ;  and  have  not  suffered  them  to 
be  nursed  near  me.  .  .  ." l  '•  Never  take,  and,  still  less, 
never  give,  to  the  women  of  your  household  the  care  of  the 
feeding  of  your  children  !  " 

Montaigne  joined  precept  to  example.  He  somewhere  say? 
unfeelingly:  "My  children  all  died  while  at  nurse."2  He 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  a  man  of  letters  ought  to  prefer 

1  I$ook  II.  chap.  viif. 

2 1  am  not  sure  that  this  remark  does  not  do  Montaigne  injustice,  especi- 
ally when  we  consider  the  connection  in  which  the  original  remark  i.s  made : 
' ;  I  am  of  opinion  that  what  is  not  to  be  done  by  reason,  prudence,  and 
address,  is  never  to  be  effected  by  force.  I  myself  was  brought  up  after 
that  manner ;  and  they  tell  me  that,  in  all  my  first  age,  I  never  felt  the  rod 
but  twice,  and  then  very  easily.  I  have  practised  the  same  method  with  my 
children,  who  all  of  them  dy'd  at  nurse;  but  Leonora,  my  only  daughter,  is 
arrived  to  the  age  of  six  years  and  upwards  without  other  correction  for 
her  childish  faults  than  words  only,  and  those  very  gentle."  Book  II. 
chap.  vin.  (P.) 


THE   RENAISSANCE.  109 

his  writings  to  his  children  :    "  The  births  of  our  intelligence 
are  the  children  the  most  truly  our  own."  l 

120.  INCOMPLETENESS  OF  HIS  VIEWS  ON  THE  EDUCATION 
OF  WOMEN.  — Another  mental  defect  in  Montaigne  is,  that, 
by  reason  of  his  moderation  and  conservatism,  he  remains  a 
little  narrow.  High  conceptions  of  human  destiny  are  not 
to  be  expected  of  him ;  his  manner  of  conceiving  of  it  is 
mean  and  commonplace.  This  lack  of  intellectual  breadth 
is  especially  manifest  in  his  reflections  on  the  education  of 
women.  Montaigne  is  of  that  number,  who,  through  false 
gallantry,  would  keep  woman  in  a  state  of  ignorance  on  the 
pretext  that  instruction  would  mar  her  natural  charms. 
In  their  case,  he  would  prohibit  even  the  stud}'  of  rhetoric, 
because,  he  says,  that  would  "  conceal  her  charms  under 
borrowed  charms."  Women  should  be  content  with  the 
advantages  which  their  sex  assures  to  them.  With  the 
knowledge  which  they  naturally  have,  "  they  command 
with  the  switch,  and  rule  both  the  regents  and  the  schools." 
However,  he  afterwards  thinks  better  of  it ;  but  in  his  con- 
cessions there  is  more  of  contempt  than  in  his  prohibitions : 
' '  If,"however,  it  displeases  them  to  make  us  any  concessions 
whatever,  and  they  are  determined,  through  curiosity,  to 
know  something  of  books,  poetry  is  an  amusement  befitting 
their  needs  ;  for  it  is  a  wanton,  crafty  art,  disguised,  all  for 
pleasure,  all  for  show,  just  as  they  are."  2 

The  following  passage  may  also  be  quoted  :  — 
"  When  I  see  them  tampering  with  rhetoric,  law,  logic, 
and  the  like,  so  improper  and  unnecessary  for  their  busi- 
ness, I  begin  to  suspect  that  the  men  who  inspire  them  with 
such  things  do  it  that  the}'  may  govern  them  upon  that 
account."3 

1  Book  III.  chap.  xiu.  -  Book  III.  chap.  in. 

3  Book  III.  chao.  in. 


I 

110  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  impossible  to  express  a  greater  contempt  for  women. 
Montaigne  goes  so  far  as  to  deny  her  positive  qualities  of 
heart.  He  chances  to  say,  with  reference  to  Mile,  de 
Gournay,  his  adopted  daughter:  "The  perfection  of  the 
most  saintly  affection  has  been  attained  when  it  does  not 
exhibit  the  least  trace  of  sex." 

To  conclude :  notwithstanding  some  grave  defects,  the 
pedagogy  of  Montaigne  is  a  pedagogy  of  good  sense,  and 
certain  parts  of  it  will  always  deserve  to  be  admired.  The 
Jansenists,  and  Locke,  and  Rousseau,  in  different  degrees, 
draw  their  inspiration  from  Montaigne.  In  his  own  age,  it 
is  true,  his  ideas  were  accepted  by  scarcely  any  one  save  his 
disciple  Charron,  who,  in  his  book  of  Wisdom?  has  done 
scarcely  more  than  to  arrange  in  order  the  thoughts  that  are 
scattered  through  the  Essays.  But  if  he  had  no  influence 
upon  his  own  age,  Montaigne  has  at  least  remained,  after 
three  centuries,  a  sure  guide  in  the  matter  of  intellectual 
education. 

[121.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  dominant  charac- 
teristic of  education  during  the  Renaissance  period  is  the 
reaction  which  it  exhibits  against  certain  errors  in  Middle 
Age  education. 

2.  A  second  characteristic  is  a  disposition  to  conciliate  or 
harmonize  principles  and   methods  whose  fault  is  exagger- 
ation. 

3.  Against  instruction  based  almost  wholly  on  authority, 
there  is  a  reaction  in  favor  of  free  inquiry. 

4.  Opposed  to  an  education  of  the  professional  or  technical 
type,  there  is  proposed  an  education  of  the  general  or  liberal 
type. 

1  See  particularly  Chap.  xiv.  of  Book  III. 


9 
THE   RENAISSANCE.  Ill 

5.  From  being  almost  exclusively  ethical  and  religious, 
education  tends  to  become  secular. 

6.  Didactic,  formal  instruction  out  of  books,  dealing  in 
second-hand  knowledge,  is  succeeded  by  informal,  intuitive 
instruction  from  natural  objects,  dealing  in  knowledge  afrfirst 
hand. 

7.  The  conception  that  education  is  a  process  of  manu- 
facture begins  to  give  place  to  the  conception  that  it  is  a 
process  of  growth. 

8.  Teaching  whose  purpose  was  information  is  succeeded 
by   teaching   whose    purpose    is    formation,    discipline,    or 
training. 

9.  A  discipline  that  was  harsh  and  cruel  is  succeeded  by 
a  discipline  comparatively  mild  and  humane  ;   and  manners 
that  were  rude  and  coarse,  are  followed  by  a  finer  code  of 
civility.] 


CHAPTER  VI. 

• 

PROTESTANTISM   AND   PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.— 
LUTHER   AND   COMENIUS. 

ORIGIN  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION;  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  RE- 
FORM J  CALVIN,  MELANCTHON,  ZWINGLI  ;  LUTHER  (1483-1546)  ; 
APPEAL  ADDRESSED  TO  THE  MAGISTRATES  AND  LEGISLATORS 
OF  GERMANY;  DOUBLE  UTILITY  OF  INSTRUCTION;  NECESSITY  OF 
A  SYSTEM  OF  PUBLIC  INSTRUCTION  ;  CRITICISM  OF  THE  SCHOOLS 
OF  THE  PERIOD;  ORGANIZATION  OF  NEW  SCHOOLS;  PROGRAMME 
OF  STUDIES;  PROGRESS  IN  METHODS;  THE  STATES  GENERAL  OF 
ORLEANS  (1560)  ;  RATICH  (1571-1635)  ;  COMENIUS  (1592-1671)  ;  HIS 
CHARACTER;  BACONIAN  INSPIRATION;  LIFE  OF  COMENIUS;  HIS 
PRINCIPAL  WORKS;  DIVISION  OF  INSTRUCTION  INTO  FOUR  GRADES; 
ELEMENTARY  INITIATION  INTO  ALL  THE  STUDIES;  THE  PEOPLE'S 
SCHOOL;  SITE  OF  THE  SCHOOL;  INTUITIONS  OF  SENSE  ;  SIMPLIFICA- 
TION OF  GRAMMATICAL  STUDIES;  PEDAGOGICAL  PRINCIPLES  OF 

COMENIUS;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


122.  ORIGIN  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION. — With  La  Salle 
and  the  foundation  of  the  Institute  of  the  Brethren  of  the 
Christian  Schools,  the  historian  of  education  recognizes  the 
Catholic  origin  of  primary  instruction  ;  in  the  decrees  and 
laws  of  the  French  Revolution,  its  lay  and  philosophical 
origin;  but  it  is  to  the  Protestant  Reformers,  —  to  Luther 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  to  Comenius  in  the  seventeenth 
—  that  must  be  ascribed  the  honor  of  having  first  organized 
schools  for  the  people.  In  its  origin,  the  primary  school  is 
the  child  of  Protestantism,  and  its  cradle  was  the  Reforma- 
tion. 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      113 

123.  SPIRIT  OP  THE  PROTESTANT  REFORM.  —  The  develop- 
ment of  primary  instruction  was  the  logical  consequence  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Protestant  Reform.     As 
Michel  fire1  al  has  said  :  ll  In  making  man  responsible  for  his 
own  faith,  and  in  placing  the  source  of  that  faith  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  the  Reform  contracted  the  obligation  to  put  each 
one  in  a  condition  to  save  himself  by  the  reading  and  the 
understanding  of  the  Bible.  .  .  .     The  necessity  of  explain- 
ing the  Catechism,  and   making  comments  on  it,  was  for 
teachers  an  obligation  to  learn  how  to  expound  a  thought, 
and  to  decompose  it  into  its  elements.     The  stud}*  of  the 
mother  tongue  and  of  singing,  was  associated  with  the  reading 
of  the  Bible  (translated  into  German  by  Luther)  and  with 
religious  services."     The  Reform,  then,  contained,  in  germ, 
a  complete  revolution  in  education  ;  it  enlisted  the  interests 
of   religion    in   the    service   of   instruction,    and   associated 
knowledge  with  faith.     This  is  the  reason  that,   for  three 
centuries,  the  Protestant  nations  have  led  humanity  in  the 
matter  of  primary  instruction. 

124.  CALVIN    (1509-1564),    MELANCTHON    (1497-1560), 
ZWINGLI   (1484-1532).— However,  all   the   Protestant  Re- 
formers were  far  from  exhibiting  the  same  zeal  in  behalf  of 
primary  instruction.     Calvin,  absorbed  in  religious  struggles 
and  polemics,   was  not  occupied  with  the  organization  of 
schools  till  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  and  even  the  college 
that  he  founded  at  Geneva,  iu  1559,  was  scarcely  more  than 
a  school  for  the  study  of  Latin.     Melancthon,  who  has  been 
called  "the  preceptor  of  Germany,"  worked  more  for  high 
schools  than  for  schools  for  the  people.     He  was  above  all 
else  a  professor  of  Belles-Lettres  ;  and  it  was  with  chagrin 
that  he  saw  his  courses  in  the  University  of  Wittenberg  de- 
serted by  students  when  he  lectured  on  the  Olynthiacs  of 


114  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Demosthenes.  Before  Calvin  and  Melancthon,  the  Swiss 
reformer  Zwingli  had  shown  his  great  interest  in  primary 
teaching,  in  his  little  book  "  upon  the  manner  of  instructing 
and  bringing  up  boys  in  a  Christian  way"  (1524).  lu  this 
he  recommended  natural  history,  arithmetic,  and  also  exer- 
cises in  fencing,  in  order  to  furnish  the  country  with  timely 
defenders. 

125.  LUTHER  (1483-1546).    The  German  reformer  Luther 
is,  of  all  his  co-religionists,  the  one  who  has  served  the  cause 
of  elementary  instruction  with  the  most  ardor.     He  not  oul\- 
addressed  a  pressing  appeal  to  the  ruliug  classes  in  behalf  of 
founding  schools  for  the  people,  but,  by  his  influence,  meth- 
ods of  instruction  were  improved,  and  the  educational  spirit 
was  renewed  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  Protestant- 
ism.    "  Spontaneity,"  it  has  been  said,  not  without  some 
exaggeration,  ''  free  thought,  aud  free  inquiry,  are  the  basis 
of  Protestantism  ;  where  it  has  reigned,  there  have  disap- 
peared the  method  of   repeating  and  of  .learning  by  heart 
without  reflection,  mechanism,  subjection  to  authority,  the 
paralysis  of  the  intelligence  oppressed  by  dogmatic  instruc- 
tion,   and   science   put   in   tutelage   by   the    beliefs   of   the 
Church."  1 

126.  APPEAL  ADDRESSED  TO  THE  MAGISTRATES  AXD  LEGIS- 
LATORS OF  GERMANY.  —  In  1524,  Luther,  in  a  special  docu- 
ment addressed  to  the  public  authorities  of  Germany,  forcibly 
expressed  himself  against  the  neglect  into  which  the  interests 
of  instruction  had  fallen.    This  appeal  has  this  characteristic, 
that  the  great  reformer,  while  assuming  that  the  Church  is 
the  mother  of  the  school,  seems  especially  to  count  on  the 
secular  arm,  upon  the  power  of  the  people,  to  serve  his  pur- 

i  Dittes,  op.  cit.  p.  127. 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      115 

poses  in  the  cause  of  universal  instruction.  "  Each  city," 
he  said,  "is  subjected  to  great  expense  every  year  for  the 
construction  of  roads,  for  fortifying  its  ramparts,  and  for 
buying  arms  and  equipping  soldiers.  Why  should  it  not 
spend  an  equal  sum  for  the  support  of  one  or  two  school- 
masters? The  prosperity  of  a  city  does  not  depend  solely 
on  its  natural  riches,  on  the  solidity  of  its  walls,  on  the  ele- 
gance of  its  mansions,  and  on  the  abundance  of  arms  in  its 
arsenals  ;  but  the  safety  and  strength  of  a  city  reside  above 
all  in  a  good  education,  which  furnishes  it  with  instructed, 
reasonable,  honorable,  and  well-trained  citizens." l 

127.  DOUBLE   UTILITY   OF   INSTRUCTION. — A  remarkable 
fact  about  Luther  is,  that  as  a  preacher  of  instruction,  he  does 
not  speak  merely  from  the  religious  point  of  view.     After 
having  recommended  schools  as  institutions  auxiliary  to  the 
Church,  he  makes  a  resolute  argument  from  the  human  point 
of  view.     '•  Were  there  neither  soul,  heaven,  nor  hell,"  he 
says,  "it  would  still  be  necessary  to  have  schools  for  the  sake 
of  affairs  here  below,  as  the  history  of  the  Greeks  and  the 
Romans  plainly  teaches.     The  world  has  need  of  educated 
men  and  women,  to  the  end  that  the  men  may  govern  the 
country  properly,  and  that  the  women  may  properly  bring  up 
their  children,  care  for  their  domestics,  and  direct  the  affairs 
of  their  households." 

128.  NECESSITY  OF  PUBLIC  INSTRUCTION. — The   objection 
will  perhaps  be  made,  says  Luther,  that  for  the  education  of 

1  Luther's  argument  for  compulsion  should  not  be  omitted:  "It  is  my 
opinion  that  the  authorities  are  bound  to  force  their  subjects  to  send  their 
children  to  school.  ...  If  they  can  oblige  their  able-bodied  subjects  to 
carry  the  lance  and  the  arquebuse,  to  mount  the  ramparts,  and  to  do  com- 
plete military  service,  for  a  much  better  reason  may  they,  and  ought  they, 
to  force  their  subjects  to  send  their  children  to  school,  for  here  it  is  the 
question  of  a  much  more  terrible  war  with  the  devil."  (P.) 


116  THE    HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

children  the  home  is  sufficient,  and  that  the  school  is  useless. 
"  To  this  I  reply  :  We  clearly  see  how  the  boys  and  girls  are 
educated  who  remain  at  home."  He  then  shows  that  they 
are  ignorant  and  "  stupid,"  incapable  of  taking  part  in  conver- 
sation, of  giving  good  advice,  and  without  any  experience  of 
life ;  while,  if  they  had  been  educated  in  the  schools,  by 
teachers  who  could  give  instruction  in  the  languages,  in  the 
arts,  and  in  history,  they  might  in  a  little  time  gather  up 
within  themselves,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  experience  of  what- 
ever has  happened  since  the  beginning  of  the  world  ;  and 
from  this  experience,  he  adds,  they  would  derive  the  wisdom 
they  need  for  self-direction  and  for  giving  wise  counsel  to 
others. 

129.  CRITICISM  OF  THE  SCHOOLS  OP  THE  PERIOD.  —  But 
since  there  must  be  public  schools,  can  we  not  be  content 
with  those  which  already  exist?  Luther  replies  by  proving 
that  parents  neglect  to  send  their  children  to  them,  and  by 
denouncing  the  uselessness  of  the  results  obtained  by  those 
who  attend  them.  "  We  find  people,"  he  says,  "  who  serve 
God  in  strange  ways.  They  fast  and  wear  coarse  clothing, 
but  they  pass  blindly  by  the  true  divine  service  of  the  home, 
—  they  do  not  know  how  to  bring  up  their  children.  .  .  . 
Believe  me,  it  is  much  more  necessary  to  give  attention  to 
your  children  and  to  provide  for  their  education  than  to  pur- 
chase indulgencies,  to  visit  foreign  churches,  or  to  make  sol- 
emn vows.  .  .  .  All  people,  especially  the  Jews,  oblige  their 
children  to  go  to  school  more  than  Christians  do.  This  is 
why  the  state  of  Christianity  is  so  low,  for  all  its  force  and 
power  are  in  the  rising  generation  ;  and  if  these  are  neg- 
lected, there  will  be  Christian  churches  like  a  garden  that  has 
been  neglected  in  the  spring-time.  .  .  .  Every  day  children 
are  born  and  are  growing  up,  and,  unfortunately,  no  one 
cares  for  the  poor  young  people,  no  one  thinks  to  train  them  ; 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      117 

they  are  allowed  to  go  as  they  will.  Was  it  not  lamentable 
to  see  a  lad  study  in  twenty  }-ears  and  more  only  just  enough 
bad  Latin  to  enable  him  to  become  a  priest,  and  to  go  to 
mass?  And  he  who  attained  to  this  was  counted  a  very 
happy  being !  Right  happy  the  mother  who  bore  such  a 
child !  And  he  has  remained  all  his  life  a  poor  unlettered 
man.  Everywhere  we  have  seen  such  teachers  and  masters, 
who  knew  nothing  themselves  and  could  teach  nothing  that 
was  good  and  useful ;  they  did  not  even  know  how  to  learn 
and  to  teach.  Has  anything  else  been  learned  up  to  this 
time  in  the  high  schools  and  in  the  convents  except  to 
become  asses  and  blockheads  ?  .  .  .  " 

130.  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOLS.  — So  Luther 
resolves  on  the  organization  of  new  schools.  The  cost  of 
their  maintenance  he  makes  a  charge  on  the  public  treasury  ; 
he  demonstrates  to  parents  the  moral  obligation  to  have  their 
children  instructed  in  them  ;  to  the  duty  of  conscience  he 
adds  civil  obligation  ;  and,  finally,  he  gives  his  thought  to 
the  means  of  recruiting  the  teaching  service.  'k  Since  the 
greatest  evil  in  even-  place  is  the  lack  of  teachers,  we  must 
not  wait  till  they  come  forward  of  themselves  ;  we  must  take 
the  trouble  to  educate  them  and  prepare  them."  To  this  end 
Luther  keeps  the  best  of  the  pupils,  boys  and  girls,  for  a 
longer  time  in  school ;  gives  them  special  instructors,  and 
opens  libraries  for  their  use.  In  his  thought  he  never  dis- 
tinguishes women  teachers  from  men  teachers ;  he  wants 
schools  for  girls  as  well  as  for  boys.  Onty,  not  to  burden 
parents  and  divert  children  from  their  daily  labor,  he  re- 
quires but  little  time  for  school  duties.  "  You  ask  :  Is  it 
possible  to  get  along  without  our  children,  and  bring  them  up 
like  gentlemen  ?  Is  it  not  necessary  that  they  work  at 
home  ?  I  reply  :  I  by  no  means  approve  of  those  schools 
where  a  child  was  accustomed  to  pass  twenty  or  thirty  years 


118  THE   HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

in  studying  Donatus  or  Alexander1  without  learning  any- 
thing. Another  world  has  dawned,  in  which  things  go 
differently.  My  opinion  is  that  we  must  send  the  boys  to 
school  one  or  two  hours  a  day,  and  have  them  learu  ti  trade 
at  home  for  the  rest  of  the  time.  It  is  desirable  that  these 
two  occupations  march  side  by  side.  As  it  now  is,  children 
certainly  spend  twice  as  much  time  in  playing  ball,  running 
the  streets,  and  playing  truant.  And  so  the  girls  can 
equally  well  devote  nearly  the  same  time  to  school,  without 
neglecting  their  home  duties ;  they  lose  more  time  than  this 
in  over-sleeping  and  in  dancing  more  than  is  meet." 

131.  PROGRAMME  OF  STUDIES. — Luther  gives  the  first 
place  to  the  teaching  of  religion  :  "  Is  it  not  reasonable  that 
every  Christian  should  know  the  Gospel  at  the  age  of  nine 
or  ten?" 

Then  come  the  languages,  not,  as  might  be  hoped,  the 
mother  tongue,  but  the  learned  languages,  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Hebrew.  Luther  had  not  yet  been  sufficiently  rid  of  the  old 
spirit  to  comprehend  that  the  language  of  the  people  ou^ht 
to  be  the  basis  of  universal  instruction.  He  left  to  Comenius 
the  glory  of  making  the  final  separation  of  the  primary 
school  from  the  Latin  school.  But  yet,  Luther  gave  excel- 
lent advice  for  the  study  of  languages,  which  must  be 
learned,  he  said,  less  in  the  abstract  rules  of  grammar  than 
in  their  concrete  reality. 

Luther  recommends  the  mathematics,  and  also  the  study 
of  nature ;  but  he  has  a  partiality  for  history  and  historians, 

1  Names  for  treatises  on  grammar  and  philosophy  respectively.  Donatus 
was  a  celebrated  grammarian  and  rhetorician  who  taught  at  Koine  in  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century  A.D.;  and  Alexander,  a  celebrated  Greek  com- 
mentator on  the  writings  of  Aristotle,  who  taught  the  Peripatetic  philoso- 
phy at  Athens  in  the  end  of  the  second  and  the  beginning  of  the  third  cen- 
turies A.D.  (P.) 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      119 

who  are,  he  says,  "the  best  people  and  the  best  teachers," 
on  the  condition  that  they  do  not  tamper  with  the  truth,  and 
that  "  they  do  not  make  obscure  the  work  of  God." 

Of  the  liberal  arts  of  the  Middle  Age,  Luther  does  not 
make  much  account.  He  rightly  says  of  dialectics,  that  it  is 
no  equivalent  for  real  knowledge,  and  that  it  is  simply  "  an 
instrument  by  which  we  render  to  ourselves  an  account  of 
what  we  know." 

Physical  exercises  are  not  forgotten  in  Luther's  peda- 
gogical regulations.  But  he  attaches  an  especial  importance 
to  singing.  "Unless  a  schoolmaster  know  how  to  sing,  I 
think  him  of  no  account."  "Music,"  he  says  again,  "  is  a 
half  discipline  which  makes  men  more  indulgent  and  more 
mild." 

132.  PROGRESS  IN  METHODS. — At  the  same  time  that  he 
extends  the  programme  of  studies,  Luther  introduces  a  new 
spirit  into  methods.  He  wishes  more  liberty  and  more  joy 
in  the  school. 

"  Solomon,"  he  says,  "  is  a  truly  royal  schoolmaster.  He 
does  not,  like  the  monks,  forbid  the  young  to  go  into  the 
world  and  be  happy.  Even  as  Anselm  said  :  '  A  young  man 
turned  aside  from  the  world  is  like  a  young  tree  made  to 
grow  in  a  vase.'  The  monks  have  imprisoned  young  men 
like  birds  in  their  cage.  It  is  dangerous  to  isolate  the  young. 
It  is  necessary,  on  the  contrary,  to  allow  young  people  to 
hear,  see,  and  learn  all  sorts  of  things,  while  all  the  time 
observing  the  restraints  and  the  rules  of  honor.  Enjoyment 
and  recreation  are  as  necessary  for  children  as  food  and 
drink.  The  schools  till  now  were  veritable  prisons  and  hells, 
and  the  schoolmaster  a  tyrant.  ...  A  child  intimidated  by 
bad  treatment  is  irresolute  in  all  he  does.  He  who  has  trem- 
bled before  his  parents  will  tremble  all  his  life  at  the  sound 
of  a  leaf  which  rustles  in  the  wind." 


120  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

These  quotations  will  suffice  to  make  appreciated  the  large 
and  liberal  spirit  of  Luther,  and  the  range  of  his  thought  as 
an  educator.  No  one  has  more  extolled  the  office  of  the 
teacher,  of  which  he  said,  when  comparing  it  to  preaching, 
it  is  the  work  of  all  others  the  noblest,  the  most  useful,  and 
the  best;  "and  yet,"  he  added,  "  I  do  not  know  which  of 
these  two  professions  is  the  better." 

Do  not  let  ourselves  imagine,  however,  that  Luther  at  once 
exercised  a  decisive  influence  on  the  current  education  of  his 
day.  A  few  schools  were  founded,  called  writing  schools ; 
but  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  and  other  events,  interrupted  the 
movement  of  which  Luther  has  the  honor  of  having  been  the 
originator. 

133.  THE  STATES  GENERAL  OF  ORLEANS  (1560). — While 
in  German}*,  under  the  impulse  of  Luther,  primary  schools 
began  to  be  established,  France  remained  in  the  background. 
Let  us  note,  however,  the  desires  expressed  by  the  States 
General  of  Orleans,  in  1560  :  — 

"  May  it  please  the  king,"  it  was  said  in  the  memorial  of 
the  nobility,  "  to  levy  a  contribution  upon  the  church  reve- 
nues for  the  reasonable  support  of  teachers  and  men  of 
learning  in  every  city  and  village,  for  the  instruction  of 
the  needy  youth  of  the  country ;  and  let  all  parents  be 
required,  under  penalty  of  a  fine,  to  send  their  children 
to  school,  and  let  them  be  constrained  to  observe  this  law  by 
the  lords  and  the  ordinary  magistrates." 

It  was  demanded,  in  addition,  that  public  lectures  be 
given  on  the  Sacred  Scriptures  in  intelligible  language,  that  is, 
in  the  mother  tongue.  But  these  demands,  so  earnest  and 
democratic,  of  the  Protestant  nobility  of  sixteenth  century 
France,  were  not  regarded.  With  the  fall  of  Protestantism, 
the  cause  of  primary  instruction  in  France  was  doomed  to  a 
long  eclipse.  The  nobles  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      121 

centuries  did  not  think  of  petitioning  again  for  the  education 
of  the  people,  and  Diderot  could  truthfully  say  of  them  : 
"  The  nobility  complain  of  the  farm  laborers  who  know  how 
to  read.  Perhaps  the  chief  grievance  of  the  nobility  reduces 
itself  to  this  :  that  a  peasant  who  knows  how  to  read  is  more 
difficult  to  oppress  than  another." 

134.  RATICH  (1571-1635). —  In  the  first  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  Ratich,  a  German,  and  Comenius,  a 
Slave,  were,  with  very  different  degrees  of  merit,  the  heirs 
of  the  educational  thought  of  Luther. 

AVith  something  of  the  charlatan  and  the  demagogue, 
Ratich  devoted  his  life  to  propagating  a  novel  art  of  teaching, 
which  he  called  didactics,  and  to  which  he  attributed  marvels. 
He  pretended,  by  his  method  of  languages,  to  teach  Hebrew, 
Greek,  and  Latin,  in  six  months.  But  nevertheless,  out  of 
many  strange  performances  and  lofty  promises,  there  issue 
some  thoughts  of  practical  value.  The  first  merit  of  Ratich 
was  to  give  the  mother  tongue,  the  German  language,  the 
precedence  over  the  ancient  languages.  An  English  educa- 
tional writer,  Mr.  R.  H.  Quick,  in  his  Essays  on  Educational 
Reformers  (1874),  has  thus  summed  up  the  essential  princi- 
ples of  the  pedagogy  of  Ratich :  1 .  Everything  should  be 
taught  in  its  own  time  and  order,  and  according  to  the  natural 
method,  in  passing  from  the  more  easy  to  the  more  difficult. 
2.  Only  one  thing  should  be  learned  at  a  time.  "  We  do  not 
cook  at  the  same  time  in  one  pot,  soup,  meat,  fish,  milk,  and 
vegetables."  3.  The  same  thing  should  be  repeated  several 
times.  4.  By  means  of  these  frequent  repetitions,  the  pupil 
will  have  nothing  to  learn  by  heart.  5.  All  school-books 
should  be  written  on  the  same  plan.  6.  The  thing  as  a  whole 
should  be  made  known  before  the  thing  in  its  details,  and 
the  sequence  should  be  from  the  general  to  the  special. 
7.  In  every  case  we  should  proceed  by  induction  and  ex  peri- 


122  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ment.  Ratich  especially  means  by  this  that  we  must  make 
an  end  of  mere  authority,  and  of  the  testimony  of  the 
ancients,  and  must  appeal  to  individual  reason.  8.  Finally, 
everything  should  be  learned  without  coercion.  Coercion  and 
the  rod  are  contrary  to  nature,  and  disgust  the  young  with 
study.  The  human  understanding  learns  with  pleasure  all 
that  it  ought  to  retain.  It  does  not  seem  that  Ratich  knew 
how  to  draw  from  these  pi'inciples,  which,  by  the  way,  are 
not  true  save  under  certain  corrections,  all  the  happy  results 
that  are  contained  in  them.  He  left  to  Comenius  the  glory 
of  applying  the  new  spirit  to  actual  practice. 

135.  COMENIUS  (1592-1671).  —  For  a  long  time  unknown 
and  unappreciated,  Comeuius  has  finally  received  from  our 
contemporaries  the  admiration  that  is  due  him.  Michelet 
speaks  of  him  with  enthusiasm  as  "  that  rare  genius,  that 
gentle,  fertile,  universal  scholar "  ; x  and  he  calls  him  the 
first  evangelist  of  modern  pedagogy,  Pestalozzi  being  the 
second.  It  is  easy  to  justify  this  appreciation.  The  char- 
acter of  Comenius  equals  his  intelligence.  Through  a  thou- 
sand obstacles  he  devoted  his  long  life  to  the  work  of  popular 
instruction.  With  a  generous  ardor  he  consecrated  himself 
to  infancy.  He  wrote  twenty  works  and  taught  in  twenty 
cities.  Moreover,  he  was  the  first  to  form  a  definite  concep- 
tion of  what  the  elementary  studies  should  be.  He  deter- 
mined, nearly  three  hundred  %years  ago,  with  an  exactness 
that  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired,  the  division  of  the  dif- 
ferent grades  of  instruction.  He  exactly  defined  some  of 
the  essential  laws  of  the  art  of  teaching.  He  applied  to 
pedagogy,  with  remarkable  insight,  the  principles  of  modern 
logic.  Finally,  as  Michelet  has  said,  he  was  the  Galileo,  we 
would  rather  say,  the  Bacon,  of  modern  education. 

1  Michelet,  Nosfils,  p.  175  et  seq. 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      123 

136.  BACONIAN  INSPIRATION.  —  The  special  aims  of  peda- 
gogy are  essentially  related  to  the  general  aims  of  science. 
All  progress  in  science  has  its  corresponding  effects  on  edu- 
cation. When  an  innovator  has  modified  the  laws  for  the 
discovery  of  truth,  other  innovators  appear,  who  modify,  in 
their  turn,  the  rules  for  instruction.  To  a  new  logic  almost 
necessarily  corresponds  a  new  pedagogy. 

Now  Bacon,  at  the  opening  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
had  opened  unknown  routes  to  scientific  investigation.  For 
the  abstract  processes  of  thought,  for  the  barren  comparison 
of  propositions  and  words,  in  which  the  whole  art  of  the 
syllogism  consisted,  the  author  of  the  Novum  Organnm  had 
substituted  the  concrete  study  of  reality,  the  living  and 
fruitful  observation  of  nature.  The  mechanism  of  deduc- 
tive reasoning  was  replaced  by  the  slow  and  patient  inter- 
pretation of  facts.  It  no  longer  answered  to  analyze  with 
docile  spirit  principles  that  were  assumed,  right  or  wrong,  as 
absolute  truths  ;  nor  to  become  expert  in  handling  the  syllo- 
gism, which,  like  a  mill  running  dry,  often  produced  but 
little  flour.  It  was  now  necessary  to  open  the  eyes  to  the 
contemplation  of  the  universe,  and  by  sense  intuition,  by 
observation,  by  experiment,  and  by  induction,  to  penetrate 
its  secrets,  and  determine  its  laws.  It  was  necessary  to 
ascend,  step  by  step,  from  the  knowledge  of  the  simplest 
things  to  the  discovery  of  the  most  general  laws ;  and, 
finally,  to  demand  of  nature  herself  to  reveal  all  that  the 
human  intelligence,  in  its  solitary  meditations,  is  powerless 
to  discover. 

Looking  at  this  subject  more  closely,  this  revolution  in 
science,  so  important  from  the  point  of  view  of  speculative 
inquiry,  and  destined  to  change  the  aspect  of  the  sciences, 
also  contained  in  itself  a  revolution  in  education.  For  this 
purpose,  all  that  was  needed  was  to  apply  to  the  develop- 


124  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

rnent  of  the  intelligence  and  to  the  communication  of  knowl- 
edge the  rules  proposed  by  Bacon  for  the  investigation  of 
truth.  The  laws  of  scientific  induction  might  become  the 
laws  for  the  education  of  the  soul.  No  more  setting  out 
with  abstract  principles,  imposed  by  authority ;  but  facts 
intuitively  apprehended,  gathered  by  observation  and  veri- 
fied by  experiment ;  the  order  of  nature  faithfully  followed  : 
a  cautious  progression  from  the  simplest  and  most  elemen- 
tary ideas  to  the  most  difficult  and  most  complex  truths  ; 
the  knowledge  of  things  instead  of  an  analysis  of  words,  — 
such  was  to  be  the  character  of  the  new  system  of  instruc- 
tion. In  other  terms,  it  was  possible  to  make  the  child  fol- 
low, in  order  to  lead  him  to  know  and  to  comprehend  the 
capitalized  truths  that  constitute  the  basis  of  elementary 
instruction,  the  same  method  that  Bacon  recommended  to 
scholars  for  the  discovery  of  unknown  truths.1 

It  is  this  conversion,  or,  as  we  might  say,  this  translation, 
of  the  maxims  of  the  Baconian  logic  into  pedagogical  rules, 
that  Comeuius  attempted,  and  this  is  why  he  has  been  called 
"the  father  of  the  intuitive  method."  He  was  nourished, 
intellectually,  by  the  reading  of  Bacon,  whom  he  resembles, 
not  only  in  his  ideas,  but  also  in  his  figurative  and  often 
allegorical  language.  Even  the  title  of  one  of  his  books, 
Didactica  Magna,  recalls  the  title  of  Bacon's  Instaxraffo 
Magna. 

1  This  is,  perhaps,  the  earliest  appearance  of  the  conception  that  learn- 
ing should  be  a  process  of  discovery  or  of  re-discovery.  Condillac  (1715- 
1780)  has  elaborated  this  idea  in  the  introduction  to  his  Grammair<;  and 
Spencer  (Education,  p.  T2'2)  makes  it  a  fundamental  law  of  teaching.  If 
this  assumed  principle  were  to  be  rigorously  applied,  as,  fortunately,  it 
cannot  be,  progress  in  human  knowledge  would  be  impossible.  Mr.  Bain's 
comment  on  this  doctrine  (Education  as  a  Science,  p.  94)  is  as  follows: 
"This  bold  fiction  is  sometimes  put  forward  as  one  of  the  regular  arts  of 
the  teacher  ;  but  I  should  prefer  to  consider  it  as  an  extraordinary  device, 
admissible  only  on  special  occasions."  (P.) 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.       125 

137.  THE  LIFE  OF  COMENUIS. — To  know  Coraenius  and 
the  part  he  played  in  the  seventeenth  centurj',  to  appreciate 
this  grand  educational  character,  it  would  be  necessary  to 
begin  by  relating  his  life  ;  his  misfortunes  ;  his  journeys  to 
England,  where  Parliament  invoked   his    aid ;    to    Sweden, 
where   the    Chancellor   Oxenstiern   employed   him  to  write 
manuals  of  instruction  ;  especially  his  relentless  industry,  his 
courage  through  exile,  and  the  long  persecutions  he  suffered 
as  a  member  of  the  sect  of  dissenters,  the  Moravian  Breth- 
ren ;  and  the  schools  he  founded  at  Fulneck,  in  Bohemia,  at 
Lissa  and  at  Patak,  in  Poland.     But  it  would  require  too 
much  of  our  space  to  follow  in  its  incidents  and  catastro- 
phes that  troubled  life,  which,  in  its  sudden  trials,  as  in  the 
firmness  that  supported  them,  recalls  the  life  of  Pestalozzi.1 

138.  His  PRINCIPAL  WORKS.  —  Comenius  wrote  a  large 
number  of  books  in  Latin,  in  German,  and  in  Czech  ;   but 
of  these  only  a  few  are  worthy  to  engage  the  attention  of 
the  educator.     In  his  other  works  he  allows  himself  to  go  off 
on  philosophic  excursions,  and  to  indulge  in  mystic  reveries, 
led  by  his  ardor  to  find  what  he  called  pansophia,  wisdom  or 
universal   knowledge.      In   this   wilderness   of   publications 
destined  to  oblivion,  we  shall  notice  only  three  works,  which 


1  It  may  not  be  generally  known  that  Comenius  was  once  solicited 
become  the  President  of  Harvard  College.  The  following  is  a  quotation^ 
from  Vol.  II.,  p.  14,  of  Cotton  Mather's  Mar/nalia  :  "  That  brave  old  man, 
Johannes  Amos  Commenius,  the  fame  of  whose  worth  hath  been  trumpeted 
as  far  as  more  than  three  languages  (whereof  every  one  is  indebted  unto 
his  Janua)  could  carry  it,  was  indeed  agreed  withal,  by  our  Mr.  AVinthrop 
in  his  travels  through  tliQ  low  countries,  to  come  over  into  New  England, 
and  illuminate  this  College  and  coiintrjr,  in  the  quality  of  a  President, 
which  was  now  become  vacant.  But  the  solicitations  of  the  Swedish  Am- 
bassador diverting  him  another  way,  that  incomparable  Moravian  became 
not  an  American."  This  was  on  the  resignation  of  President  Dunster,  in 
1654.  (P.) 


126  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

contain  the  general  principles  of  the  pedagogy  of  Comenius, 
and  the  applications  which  he  has  made  of  his  method :  — 

1.  The  Didactica  Magna,  the  Great  Didactics  (written   in 
Czech   at   about    1630,    and    rewritten   in    Latin    at    about 
1G40).     In   this  work  Comenius  sets   forth  his  principles, 
his   general    theories   on   education,   and   also   his    peculiar 
views  on  the  practical  organization  of  schools.     It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  a  French  translation  has  not  jet  popularized 
this  important  book,  that  would  be  worth}'  a  place  beside  the 
Thoughts  of  Locke  and  the  Emile  of  Rousseau.1 

2.  The   Janua  lingua/rum  reserata,  the  Gate  of  Tongues 
Unlocked  (1631).     In  the  thought  of  the  author,  this  was 
a  new  method  of  learning   the  languages.     Comenius,  led 
astray  on  this  point  by  his  religious  prejudices,  wished  to 
banish  the  Latin  authors  from  the  schools,  "  for  the  pur- 
pose," he  said,  "  of  reforming  studies  in  the  true  spirit  of 
Christianity."     Consequently,  in  order  to  replace  the   clas- 
sical authors,  which  he  repudiated  for  this  further  reason, 
that  the  reading  of  them  is  too  difficult,  and  to  make  a  child 
study  them  "is  to  wish  to  push  out  into  the  vast  ocean  a 
tiny  bark  that  should  be  allowed   only  to  sport  on  a  little 
lake,"  he  had  formed  the  idea  of  composing  a  collection  of 
phrases  distributed  into  a  hundred  chapters.    These  phrases, 
to  the  number  of  a  thousand,  at  first  very  simple,  and  of  a 
single   member,  then   longer   and   more   complicated,    were 
formed  of  two  thousand  words,  chosen  from  among  the  most 
common  and  the  most  useful.    Moreover,  the  hundred  chapters 
of  the  Janua  taught  the  child,  in  succession  and  in  a  methodi- 
cal order,  all  the  things  in  the  universe, — the  elements,  the 
metals,  the  stars,  the  animals,  the  organs  of  the  body,  the  arts 

1  The  most  complete  account  ever  written  of  Comenius  and  his  writings 
is,  "John  Amos  Comenius,"  by  S.  S.  Laurie  (Boston:  1885).  It  is  an  in- 
valuable contribution  to  the  philosophy  and  the  history  of  education.  (P.) 


CII. 
Geometria 


(Facsimile  of  illustration  in  the  Orb-in  Pictits  of  Coinenins.) 


Gtcmtlt*  m.  1 . 
tnedtur 


turns  >   1  —  1 

aut  dtftaKtiam 
locorunt  ,    J—  4 

five  c^uadrAHte  i    J 

five  radio.  6 
Figvrttn  rtfum 

defignac 


&  circuits,  $' 
ad  r(gulam  >  IO 


&  ttrcintim.  11 

Ex  his 
oriwncur 

cylindruf)   1 )   m.  2, 
trigomttSy  14  m.  2. 


miffd 


JTburws, 


(Dettcr/  3 — 4 
.     mir      ^ 


mit 


Unb 


(t  ab 


o,  9 


(fdjeit/  10 
it 


(12 


13 


&rv 

"    (^) 
&et  (uaadrat/  (X?ier* 
(erf/3  15 

un^  nn^r  gigutcn. 


Altitude,  f.  3.  Die$^f» 

Turns  ,f.  ^.  t)ff  J" 
Diftantia,f  i.| 
Locus,  m. 2. 
Quadrans,  m.  j. 


Radius,  m.  2. 
ft*. 


Llnea,  f.  i.Mfttofen/ 
(^©(ei^ug.) 

Arjgulus,m.  ^  DfrSSig 
rf^/  (€cfjug» )    ^ 

Circulii$,m.  a,0rr  Jtrd^ 
OJing/ST 

Regala,  f.  i. 


Nofma,  f.  i.  ba$2Din0 
rfdmatf. " 

CL-cinur,  m.  2.  fcr  €ir» 


8}  UJ,  ^ftflf. 


o 


cur. 


PROTESTANTISM   AND   PRIMARY   INSTRUCTION.      127 

and  trades,  etc.,  etc.  In  other  terms,  the  Janua  linguarum 
is  a  nomenclature  of  ideas  and  words  designed  to  fix  the  atten- 
tion of  the  child  upon  everything  he  ought  to  know  of  the 
world.  Divested  of  the  Latin  text  that  accompanies  it,  the 
Janua  is  a  first  reading-book,  very  defective  doubtless,  but 
it  gives  proof  of  a  determined  effort  to  adapt  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  child  the  knowledge  that  he  ought  to  acquire. 

3.  The  Orbis  sensuallum  pictus,  the  Illustrated  World  of 
Sensible  Objects,  the  most  popular  of  the  author's  works 
(1658).  It  is  the  Janua  linguarum  accompanied  with  pic- 
tures, in  lieu  of  real  objects,  representing  to  the  child  the 
things  that  he  hears  spoken  of,  as  fast  as  he  learns  their 
names.  The  Orbis  pictus,  the  first  practical  application  of 
the  intuitive  method,  had  an  extraordinary  success,  and  has 
served  as  a  model  for  the  innumerable  illustrated  books 
which  for  three  centuries  have  invaded  the  schools. 

139.  THE  FOUR  GRADES  OF  INSTRUCTION.  —  We  must  not 
require  a  man  of  the  seventeenth  century  to  abjure  Latin 
studies.  Comenius  prizes  them  highly  ;  but  at  least  he  is 
wise  enough  to  put  them  in  their  place,  and  does  not  con- 
found them,  as  Luther  did,  with  elementary  studies. 

Nothing  could  be  more  exact,  more  clearly  cut,  than  the 
scholastic  organization  proposed  b}7  Comenius.  We  shall 
find  in  it  what  the  experience  of  three  centuries  has  finally 
sanctioned  and  established,  the  distribution  of  schools  into 
these  grades,  —  infant  schools,  primary  schools,  secondary 
schools,  and  higher  schools. 

The  first  grade  of  instruction  is  the  maternal  school,  the 
school  by  the  mother's  knee,  materni  gremii,  as  Comenius 
calls  it.  The  mother  is  the  first  teacher.  Up  to  the  age  of 
six  the  child  is  taught  by  her ;  he  is  initiated  by  her  into 
those  branches  of  knowledge  that  he  will  pursue  in  the  pri- 
marv  school. 


128  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

The  second  grade  is  the  elementary  public  scliool.  All  the 
children,  girls  and  boys,  enter  here  at  six,  and  leave  at 
twelve.  The  characteristic  of  this  school  is  that  the  instruc- 
tion there  given  is  in  the  mother  tongue,  and  this  is  why 
Comeuius  calls  it  the  "common"  school,  vemacula,  a  term 
given  by  the  Romans  to  the  language  of  the  people. 

The  third  grade  is  represented  by  the  Latin  school  or  gym- 
nasium. Thither  are  sent  the  children  from  twelve  to 
eighteen  years  of  age  for  whom  has  been  reserved  a  more 
complete  instruction,  such  as  we  would  now  call  secondary 
instruction. 

Finally,  to  the  fourth  grade  correspond  the  academies,  that 
is,  institutions  of  higher  instruction,  opened  to  young  men 
from  eighteen  to  twenty-four  years  of  age. 

The  child,  if  he  is  able,  will  traverse  these  four  grades  in 
succession ;  but,  in  the  thought  of  Comeuius,  the  studies 
should  be  so  arranged  in  the  elementary  schools,  that  in 
leaving  them,  the  pupil  shall  have  a  general  education  which 
makes  it  unnecessary  for  him  to  go  farther,  if  his  condition 
in  life  does  not  destine  him  to  pursue  the  courses  of  the  Latin 
School. 

T*-We  pursue, "'saye-Oouremtt&y**  a  general  education,  the 
teaching  to  all  men  of  all  the  subjects  of  human  concern. 
.  .  .  The  purpose  of  the  people's  school  shall  be  that  all 
children  of  both  sexes,  from  the  tenth  to  the  twelfth  or  the 
thirteenth  year,  may  be  instructed  in  that  knowledge  whk-h 
is  useful  during  the  whole  of  life.J* 

This  was  an  admirable  definition  of  the  purpose  of  the 
primary  school.  A  thing  not  less  remarkable  is  that  Corne- 
nius  establishes  an  elementary  school  in  each  village :  — 

"There  should  be  a  maternal  school  in  each  family;  an 
elementary  school  in  each  district ;  a  gymnasium  in  each 
city  ;  an  academy  in  each  kingdom,  or  even  in  each  consid- 
erable province." 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.       129 

140.  ELEMENTARY  INITIATION  INTO  ALL  THE  STUDIES.  — 
One  of  the  most  novel  and  most  original  ideas  of  the  great 
Slavic  educator  is  the  wish  that,  from  the  earliest  years  of 
his  life,  the  child  may  acquire  some  elementary  notions  of  all 
the  sciences  that  he  is  to  study  at  a  later  period.  From  the 
cradle,  the  gaze  of  the  infant,  guided  by  the  mother,  should 
be  directed  to  all  the  objects  that  surround  him,  so  that  his 
growing  powers  of  reflection  will  be  brought  into  play  in 
working  on  these  sense  intuitions.  "Thus,  from  the  mo- 
ment he  begins  to  speak,  the  child  comes  to  know  himself,  and, 
by  his  daily  experience,  certain  general  and  abstract  expres- 
sions ;  he  comes  to  comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  words 
something,  nothing,  thus,  otherwise,  where,  similar,  different; 
and  what  are  generalizations  and  the  categories  expressed  by 
these  words  but  the  rudiments  of  metaphysics  ?  In  the  do- 
main of  physics,  the  infant  can  learn  to  know  water,  earth, 
air,  fire,  rain,  snow,  etc.,  as  well  as  the  names  and  uses  of  the 
parts  of  his  body,  or  at  least  of  the  external  members  and 
organs.  He  will  take  his  first  lesson  in  optics  in  learning  to 
distinguish  light,  darkness,  and  the  different  colors;  and  in 
astronomy,  in  noticing  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,  and 
in  observing  that  these  heavenly  bodies  rise  and  set  every 
day.  In  geography,  according  to  the  place  where  he  lives, 
he  will  be  shown  a  mountain,  a  valley,  a  plain,  a  river,  a 
village,  a  hamlet,  a  city,  etc.  In  chronology,  he  will  be 
taught  what  an  hour  is,  a  day,  a  week,  a  year,  summer,  win- 
ter, yesterday,  the  day  before  yesterday,  to-morrow,  the  day 
after  to-morrow,  etc.  History,  such  as  his  age  will  allow  him 
to  conceive,  will  consist  in  recalling  what  has  recently  passed, 
in  taking  account  of  it,  and  in  noting  the  part  that  this  one  or 
that  has  taken  in  such  or  such  an  affair.  Arithmetic,  georc- 
etry,  statistics,  mechanics,  will  not  remain  strangers  to  him. 
He  will  acquire  the  elements  of  these  sciences  in  distinguishing 


130  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

the  difference  between  little  and  much,  in  learning  to  count  up 
to  ten,  in  observing  that  three  is  more  than  two ;  that  one 
added  to  three  makes  four;  in  learning  the  sense  of  the 
words  great  and  small,  long  and  short,  iride  and  narrow, 
heavy  and  light;  in  drawing  lines,  curves,  circles,  etc. ;  in 
seeing  goods  measured  with  a  yard-stick ;  in  weighing  an 
object  in  a  balance ;  in  trying  to  make  something  or  to  take  it 
to  pieces,  as  all  children  love  to  do. 

"  In  this  impulse  to  construct  and  destroy,  there  is  but  the 
effort  of  the  little  intelligence  to  succeed  in  making  or  build- 
ing something  for  himself;  so  that,  instead  of  opposing  the 
child  in  this,  he  should  be  encouraged  and  guided." 

"  The  grammar  of  the  first  period  will  consist  in  learning 
to  pronounce  the  mother  tongue  correctly.  The  child  may 
receive  elementary  notions  even  of  politics,  in  observing 
that  certain  persons  assemble  at  the  city  hall,  and  that  they 
are  called  councillors ;  and  that  among  these  persons  there 
is  one  called  mayor,  etc.  " 1 

141.  THE  PEOPLE'S  SCHOOL. — Divided  into  six  classes, 
the  people's  school  should  prepare  the  child  either  for  active 
life  or  for  the  higher  courses.  Comenius  sends  here  not 
only  the  sons  of  peasants  and  workmen,  but  the  sons  of  the 
middle  class  or  of  the  nobility,  who  will  afterwards  enter 
the  Latin  school.  In  other  terms  ,  the  study  of  Latin  is 
postponed  till  the  age  of  twelve  ;  and  up  to  that  period  all 
children  must  receive  a  thorough  primary  education,  which 
will  comprise,  with  the  mother  tongue,  arithmetic,  geometry, 
singing,  the  salient  facts  of  history,  the  elements  of  the  nat- 
ural sciences,  and  religion.  The  latest  reforms  in  secondary 
instruction,  which,  only  within  a  very  late  period,  have  post- 

1Buisson's  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic,  Article  COMENIUS. 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      131 

poned  the  study  of  Latin  till  the  sixth  year,1  and  which  till 
then  keep  the  pupil  upou  the  subjects  of  primary  instruction, 
—  what  are  they  but  the  distant  echo  of  the  thought  of  Come- 
uius?  Let  it  be  noted,  too,  that  the  plan  of  Comenius  gave 
to  its  primary  school  a  complete  encyclopaedic  course  of 
instruction,  which  was  sufficient  for  its  own  ends,  but  which, 
while  remaining  elementary,  was  a  whole,  and  not  a  begin- 
ning.2 

Surely,  the  programme  of  studies  devised  by  Comenius 
did  not  fail  in  point  of  insufficiency  ;  we  may  be  allowed,  on 
the  contrary,  to  pronounce  it  too  extended,  too  crowded, 
conformed  rather  to  the  generous  dreams  of  an  innovator  than 
to  a  prudent  appreciation  of  what  is  practically  possible  ; 
and  we  need  not  be  astonished  that,  to  lighten  in  part  the 
heavy  burden  that  is  imposed  on  the  teacher,  Comenius  had 
the  notion  of  dividing  the  school  into  sections  which  assist- 
ants, chosen  from  among  the  best  pupils,  should  instruct 
under  the  supervision  of  the  master. 

142.  SITE  OF  THE  SCHOOL. — One  is  not  a  complete 
educator  save  on  the  condition  of  providing  for  the  exterior 
and  material  organization  of  the  school,  as  well  as  for  its 
moral  administration.  In  this  respect,  Comenius  is  still 
deserving  of  our  encomiums.  He  requires  a  yard  for  recre- 

1  In  the  French  Lyce'es  and  Colleges  the  grades  are  named  as  follows,  be- 
ginning with  the  lowest:  "ninth,  eighth,  seventh,  sixth,  fifth,  fourth,  third, 
second,  rhetoric,  philosophy,  preparatory  mathematics,  elementary  mathe- 
matics, special  mathematics."      Latin  was  formerly  begun  in  an  earlier 
grade. 

2  The  public  school  of  the  European  type  may  be  represented  by  a  series 
of  (3)  pyramids,  the  second  higher  than  the  first,  and  the  third  higher  than 
the  second,  each  independent  and  complete  in  itself;  while  the  public  school 
of  the  American  type  is  represented  by  a  single  pyramid  in  three  sections. 
AVhile  in  an  English,  French,  or  German  town,  public  education  is  admin- 
istered in  three  separate  establishments,  in  an  American  town  there  is  a 
single  graded  school  that  fulfills  the  same  functions.     (P.) 


132  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ation,  and  demands  that  the  school-house  have  a  gay  and 
cheerful  aspect.  The  question  had  been  discussed  before 
him  by  Vives  (1492-1540). 

"  There  should  be  chosen,"  saj-s  the  Spanish  educator, 
tk  a  healthful  situation,  so  that  the  pupils  may  not  one  day 
have  to  take  their  flight,  dispersed  by  the  fear  of  an  epi- 
demic. Firm  health  is  necessary  to  those  who  would  heartily 
and  profitably  apply  themselves  to  the  study  of  the  sciences. 
And  the  place  selected  should  be  isolated  from  the  crowd, 
and  especially  at  a  distance  from  occupations  that  are 
noisy,  such  as  those  of  smiths,  stone-masons,  machinists, 
wheelwrights,  and  weavers.  However,  I  would  not  have  the 
situation  too  cheerful  and  attractive,  lest  it  might  suggest  to 
the  scholars  the  taking  of  too  frequent  walks." 

But  these  considerations  that  do  honor  to  Vives  and  to 
Comenius,  were  scarcely  in  harmony  with  the  resources  then 
at  the  disposal  of  the  friends  of  instruction.  There  was 
scarcely  occasion  seriously  to  consider  how  school-houses 
should  be  constructed  and  situated,  at  a  period  when  the 
most  often  there  were  no  school-houses  existing.  "  In  win- 
ter," says  Platter,  "we  slept  in  the  school-room,  and  in 
summer  in  the  open  air."  l 

143.  SENSE  INTUITIONS. — If  Comenius  has  traced  with  a 
master  hand  the  general  organization  of  the  primary  school, 
he  has  no  less  merit  in  the  matter  of  methods. 

When  they  recommend  the  observation  of  sensible  things 
as  the  first  intellectual  exercise,  modern  educators  do  but 
repeat  what  Comenins  said  three  centuries  ago. 

"  In  the  place  of  dead  books,  why  should  we  not  open  the 
living  book  of  nature  ?  .  .  .  To  instruct  the  young  is  not  to 
beat  into  them  by  repetition  a  mass  of  words,  phrases,  sen- 
flatter,  a  Swiss  teacher  of  the  sixteenth  century  (1499-1582). 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      133 

tences,  and  opinions  gathered  out  of  authors  ;  but  it  is  to 
open  their  understanding  through  things.  .  .  . 

"  The  foundation  of  all  knowledge  consists  in  correctly  rep- 
resenting sensible  objects  to  our  senses,  so  that  they  can- be 
comprehended  with  facility.  I  hold  that  this  is  the  basis  of  all 
our  other  activities,  since  we  could  neither  act  nor  speak  wisely 
unless  we  adequately  comprehended  what  we  were  to  do  and 
say.  Now  it  is  certain  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  under- 
standing that  was  not  first  in  the  senses,  and,  consequently, 
it  is  to  lay  the  foundation  of  all  wisdom,  of  all  eloquence, 
and  of  all  good  and  prudent  conduct,  carefully  to  train  the 
senses  to  note  with  accuracy  the  differences  between  natural 
objects  ;  and  as  this  point,  important  as  it  is,  is  ordinarily 
neglected  in  the  schools  of  to-day,  and  as  objects  are  pro- 
posed to  scholars  that  they  do  not  understand  because  they 
have  not  been  properly  represented  to  their  senses  or  to  their 
imagination,  it  is  for  this  reason,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the 
toil  of  teaching,  and  on  the  other,  that  the  pain  of  learning, 
have  become  so  burdensome  and  so  unfruitful.  .  .  . 

"We  must  offer  to  the  3'oung,  not  the  shadows  of  things, 
but  the  things  themselves,  which  impress  the  senses  and 
the  imagination.  Instruction  should  commence  with  a  real 
observation  of  things,  and  not  with  a  verbal  description  of 
them." 

We  see  that  Comenius  accepts  the  doctrine  of  Bacon, 
even  to  his  absolute  sensationalism.  In  his  pre-occupation 
with  the  importance  of  instruction  through  the  senses,  he 
goes  so  far  as  to  ignore  that  other  source  of  knowledge  and 
intuitions,  the  inner  consciousness. 

144.  SIMPLIFICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  STUDY.  —  The  first 
result  of  the  experimental  method  applied  to  instruction,  is 
to  simplify  grammar  and  to  relieve  it  from  the  abuse  of  ab- 


134  THE   HISTORY  OF    PEDAGOGY. 

stract  rules.  "  Children,"  says  Comenius,  "  need  examples 
and  things  which  they  can  see,  and  not  abstract  rules." 

And  in  the  Preface  of  the  Janua  linguarum,  he  dwells 
upon  the  faults  of  the  old  method  employed  for  the  study 
of  languages. 

41  It  is  a  thing  self-evident,  that  the  true  and  proper  way  of 
teaching  languages  has  not  been  recognized  iu  the  schools 
up  to  the  present  time.  The  most  of  those  who  devoted 
themselves  to  the  study  of  letters  grew  old  in  the  study  of 
words,  and  upwards  of  ten  years  was  spent  in  the  study  of 
Latin  alone ;  indeed,  they  even  spent  their  whole  life  in  the 
study,  with  a  very  slow  and  very  trifling  profit,  which  did  not 
pay  for  the  trouble  devoted  to  it."1  It  is  by  use  and  by  read- 
ing that  Comenius  would  abolish  the  abuse  of  rules.  Rules 
ought  to  intervene  only  to  aid  use  and  give  it  surety.  The 
pupil  will  thus  learn  language,  either  in  speaking,  or  in  read- 
ing a  book  like  the  Orbis  Pictus,  in  which  he  will  find  at  the 
same  time  all  the  words  of  which  the  language  itself  is  com- 
posed, and  examples  of  all  the  constructions  of  its  syntax. 

145.  NECESSITY  OF  DRILL  AND  PRACTICE.  —  Another 
essential  point  in  the  new  method,  is  the  importance  at- 
tributed by  Comenius  to  practical  exercises  :  "Artisans,"  he 
said,  "  understand  this  matter  perfectly  well.  Not  one  of 
them  will  give  an  apprentice  a  theoretical  course  on  his  trade. 
He  is  allowed  to  notice  what  is  done  b}-  his  master,  and  then 
the  tool  is  put  iu  his  hands :  it  is  in  smiting  that  one  becomes 
a  smith."  2 

1  For  this  quotation,  as  for  all  those  which  we  horrow  from  the  preface 
of  the  Jnnva  linr/uarnm,  a  French  edition  of  which  (in  three  languages: 
Latin,  German,  and  French)  appeared  in  1643,  we  copy  from  the  authentic 
text. 

2  There  is  a  misleading  fallacy  in  all  such  illustrations.  "What  analogy  is 
there  between  the  learning  of  history  or  geology  and  the  learning  of  a  trade 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      135 

It  is  no  longer  the  thing  to  repeat  mechanically  a  lesson 
learned  by  heart.  There  must  be  a  gradual  habituation  to 
action,  to  productive  work,  to  personal  effort. 

146.  GENERAL  BEARING  OF  THE  WORK  OF  COMENIUS.  — 
How  many  other  new  and  judicious  ideas  we  shall  have  to 
gather  from  Comenius  !  The  methods  which  we  would  be 
tempted  to  consider  as  wholly  recent,  his  imagination  had 
already  suggested  to  him.  For  example,  preceding  the  Orbis 
Pictus,  we  find  an  alphabet,  where  to  each  letter  corresponds 
the  cry  of  an  animal,  or  else  a  sound  familiar  to  the  child. 
Is  not  this  already  the  very  essence  of  the  phononimic  pro- 
cesses 1  brought  into  fashion  in  these  last  years  ?  But  what 
is  of  more  consequence  with  Comenius  than  a  few  happy  dis- 
coveries in  practical  pedagogy,  is  the  general  inspiration  of 
his  work.  He  gives  to  education  a  psychological  basis  in 
demanding  that  the  faculties  shall  be  developed  in  their  natu- 
ral order  :  first,  the  senses,  the  memory,  the  imagination,  and 
lastly  the  judgment  and  the  reason.  He  is  mindful  of  physi- 
cal exercises,  of  technical  and  practical  instruction,  without 
forgetting  that  in  the  primary  schools,  which  he  calls  the 
"studios  of  humanity,"  there  must  be  trained,  not  only  strong 
and  skilful  artisans,  but  \;jrtuous  and  religious  men,  imbued 
with  the  principles  of  order  and  justice.  If  he  has  stepped 
from  theology  to  pedagogy,  and  if  he  permits  himself  some- 
times to  be  borne  along  by  his  artless  bursts  of  mysticism,  at 
least  he  does  not  forget  the  necessities  of  the  real  condition, 

like  carpentry?  Should  a  physician  and  a  blacksmith  be  educated  on  the 
same,  plan  ?  In  every  case  knowledge  should  precede  practice ;  and  the 
liberal  arts  are  best  learned  by  first  learning  their  correlative  sciences.  (P.) 
1 "  A  process  of  instruction  which  consists  in  placing  beside  the  elements 
of  human  speech  thirty-three  onomatopoetic  gestures,  which  recall  to  the 
sight  the  same  ideas  that  the  sounds  and  the  articulations  of  the  voice  recall 
to  the  ear.' '  —  GROSSELIN.  (P.) 


136  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

and  of  the  present  life  of  men.  "  The  child,"  he  says,  "  shall 
learn  only  what  is  to  be  useful  to  him  in  this  life  or  in  the 
other."  Finally,  he  does  not  allow  himself  to  be  absorbed  in 
the  minute  details  of  school  management.  He  has  higher 
views,  —  he  is  working  for  the  regeneration  of  humanity. 
Like  Leibnitz,  he  would  freely  say :  "  Give  me  for  a  few 
years  the  direction  of  education,  and  I  agree  to  transform  the 
world !  " 

[147.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  Decisive  changes  in 
human  opinion,  political,  religious,  or  scientific,  involve  cor- 
responding changes  in  the  purposes  and  methods  of  educa- 
tion. 

2.  The  Reformation  was  a  breaking  with  authority  in  mat- 
ters of  religion,  as  the  Baconian  philosophy  was  a  breaking 
with  authority  in  matters  of  science  ;  and  their  joint  effect  on 
education   was   to   subject   matters   of  opinion,   belief,  and 
knowledge  to  the  individual  reason,  experience,  and  observa- 
tion. 

3.  In  holding  each  human  being  responsible  for  his  own 
salvation,  the  Reformation  made  it  necessary  for  every  one 
to  read,  and  the  logical  consequence  of  this  was  to  make 
instruction  universal ;  and  as  schools  were  multiplied,  the 
number  of  teachers  must  be  increased,  and  their  grade  of 
competence  raised. 

4.  The  conception  that  ignorance  is  an  evil,"and  a  constant 
menace  to  spiritual  and  temporal  safety,  led  to  the  idea  of 
compulsory  school-attendance. 

5.  In  the  recoil  from  the  intuitions  of  the  intellect  sanc- 
tioned by  Socrates,  to  the  intuitions  of  the  senses  sanctioned 
by  Bacon,  education  passed  from  an  extreme  dependence  on 
reflection  and  reason,  to  an  extreme  dependence  on  sense  and 
observation  ;    so  that  inference  has   been  thrown  into  dis- 


PROTESTANTISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.      137 

credit,  and  the  verdict  of  the  senses  has  been  made  the  test 
of  knowledge. 

6.  In  adapting  the  conception  of  universal  education  LJ 
the  social  conditions  of  his  time,  Comenius  was  led  to  a  gra- 
dation of  schools  that  underlies  all  modern  systems  of  public 
instruction.] 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  TEACHING  CONGREGATIONS.  —  JESUITS  AND 
JANSENISTS. 

THE  TEACHING  CONGREGATIONS;  JESUITS  AND  JANSENISTS;  FOUNDA- 
TION OF  THE  SOCIETY  OF  JESUS  (1540)  ;  DIFFERENT  JUDGMENTS 
ON  THE  EDUCATIONAL  MERITS  OF  THE  JESUITS;  AUTHORITIES  TO 
CONSULT;  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION  NEGLECTED;  CLASSICAL  STUDIES; 
LATIN  AND  THE  HUMANITIES  J  NEGLECT  OF  HISTORY,  OF  PHILOSO- 
PHY, AND  OF  THE  SCIENCES  IN  GENERAL  J  DISCIPLINE  J  EMULA- 
TION ENCOURAGED;  OFFICIAL  DISCIPLINARIAN;  GENERAL  SPIRIT 
OF  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  JESUITS;  THE  ORATORIANS ;  THE 
LITTLE  SCHOOLS;  STUDY  OF  THE  FRENCH  LANGUAGE;  NEW  SYSTEM 
OF  SPELLING;  THE  MASTERS  AND  THE  BOOKS  OF  PORT  ROYAL; 
DISCIPLINE  IN  PERSONAL  REFLECTION;  GENERAL  SPIRIT  OF  THE 
INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  AT  PORT  ROYAL;  NICOLE;  MORAL 
PESSIMISM  J  EFFECTS  ON  DISCIPLINE  J  FAULTS  IN  THE  DISCIPLINE 
OF  PORT  ROYAL;  GENERAL  JUDGMENT  ON  PORT  ROYAL;  ANA- 
LYTICAL SUMMARY. 


148.  THE  TEACHING  CONGREGATIONS.1 — Up  to  the  French 
Revolution,  up  to  the  day  when  the  conception  of  a  public 
and  national  education  was  embodied  in  the  legislative  acts 

1  Religious  congregations,  as  known  in  France,  are  associations  of  per- 
sons who,  consecrating  themselves  to  the  service  of  God,  make  a  vow  to 
live  in  common  under  the  same  rule.  Many  of  these  congregations  devote 
themselves  to  the  work  of  teaching,  and  these  are  of  two  classes,  the 
authorized  and  the  unauthorized.  For  example,  the  "Brethren  of  the 
Christian  Schools,"  founded  by  La  Salle,  is  an  authorized,  and  the  "  Society 
of  Jesus'*  an  unauthorized,  congregation.  From  statistics  published  in 
1878.  it  appears  that  there  were  then  in  France,  24  congregations  of  men 
authorized  to  teach,  and  controlling  3096  establishments;  and  528  similar 
congregations  of  women,  controlling  16.478  establishments.  At  the  same 
time  there  were  85  unauthorized  congregations  of  men,  and  260  unauthorized 
congregations  of  women,  devoted  to  teaching.  (P.) 


THE    TEACHING    CONGREGATIONS.  139 

of  our  assembled  rulers,  education  remained  almost  exclu- 
sively an  affair  of  the  Church.  The  universities  themselves 
were  dependent  in  part  on  religious  authority.  But  especially 
the  great  congregations  assumed  a  monopoly  of  the  work  of 
teaching,  the  direction  and  control  of  which  the  State  had 
not  yet  claimed  for  her  right. 

Primary  instruction,  it  is  true,  scarcely  entered  at  first  into 
the  settled  plans  of  the  religious  orders.  The  only  exception 
to  this  statement  that  can  properly  be  made,  is  the  congrega- 
tion of  the  Christian  Doctrine,  which  a  humble  priest,  Caesar 
de  Bus,  founded  at  Avignon  in  1592,  the  avowed  purpose  of 
which  was  the  religious  education  of  the  children  of  the  com- 
pany.1 But,  on  the  other  hand,  secondary  instruction  pro- 
voked the  greatest  educational  event  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
the  founding  of  the  company  of  Jesus,  and  this  movement 
was  continued  and  extended  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
either  in  the  colleges  of  the  Jesuits,  ever  growing  in  number, 
or  in  other  rival  congregations. 

149.  JESUITS  AND  JANSENISTS.  —  Among  the  religious 
orders  that  have  consecrated  their  efforts  to  the  work  of 
teaching,  the  first  place  must  be  assigned  to  the  Jesuits  and 
the  Jansenists.  Different  in  their  statutes,  their  organiza- 
tion, and  their  destinies,  these  two  congregations  are  still 
more  different  in  their  spirit.  They  represent,  in  fact,  two 
opposite,  and,  as  it  were,  contrary  phases  of  human  nature 
and  of  the  Christian  spirit.  For  the  Jesuits,  education  is 
reduced  to  a  superficial  culture  of  the  brilliant  faculties  of 
the  intelligence  ;  while  the  Jansenists,  on  the  contrary,  aspire 
to  develop  the  solid  faculties,  the  judgment,  and  the  reason. 

1  The  congregation  of  the  Doclrinaries  founded  at  a  later  period  estab- 
lishments of  secondary  instruction.  Maine  de  Biran,  Laromiguiere,  and 
Lakanal  were  pupils  of  the  Doctrinartes. 


140  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

In  the  colleges  of  the  Jesuits,  rhetoric  is  held  in  honor ; 
while  in  the  Little  Schools  of  Port  Royal,  it  is  rather  logic 
and  the  exercise  of  thought.  The  shrewd  disciples  of  Loyola 
adapt  themselves  to  the  times,  and  are  full  of  compassion  for 
human  weakness  ;  the  solitaries  of  Port  Royal  are  exacting 
of  others  and  of  themselves.  In  their  suppleness  and  cheer- 
ful optimism,  the  Jesuits  are  almost  the  Epicureans  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  with  their  austere  and  somewhat  sombre  doctrine, 
the  Jansenists  would  rather  be  the  Stoics.  The  Jesuits  and 
the  Janseuists,  those  great  rivals  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
are  still  face  to  face  as  enemies  at  the  present  moment. 
While  the  inspiration  of  the  Jesuits  tries  to  maintain  the  old 
worn-out  exercises,  like  Latin  verse,  and  the  abuse  of  the 
memory,  the  spirit  of  the  Jansenists  animates  and  inspires 
the  reformers,  who,  in  the  teaching  of  the  classics,  break 
with  tradition  and  routine,  to  substitute  for  exercises  aimed 
at  elegance,  and  for  a  superficial  instruction,  studies  of  a 
greater  solidity  and  an  education  that  is  more  complete. 

The  merit  of  institutions  ought  not  always  to  be  measured 
by  their  apparent  success.  The  colleges  of  the  Jesuits,  dur- 
ing three  centuries,  have  had  a  countless  number  of  pupils  ; 
the  Little  Schools  of  Port  Royal  did  not  live  twenty  years, 
and  during  their  short  existence  they  enrolled  at  most  only 
some  hundreds  of  pupils.  And  yet  the  methods  of  the 
Jansenists  have  survived  the  ruin  of  their  colleges  and  the 
dispersion  of  the  teachers  who  had  applied  them.  Although 
the  Jesuits  have  not  ceased  to  rule  in  appearance,  it  is  the 
Jansenists  who  triumph  in  reality,  and  who  to-day  control 
the  secondary  instruction  of  France. 

150.  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  SOCIETY  OF  JESUS.  —  In  organiz- 
ing the  Society  of  Jesus,  Ignatius  Loyola,  that  compound  of 
the  mystic  and  the  man  of  the  world,  purposed  to  establish, 


THE  TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  141 

not  an  order  devoted  to  monastic  contemplation,  but  a  real 
fighting  corps,  a  Catholic  army,  whose  double  purpose  was  to 
conquer  new  provinces  to  the  faith  through  missions,  and  to 
preserve  the  old  through  the  control  of  education.  Solemnly 
consecrated  by  the  Pope  Paul  III.,  in  1540,  the  congregation 
had  a  rapid  growth.  As  early  as  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  it  had  several  colleges  in  France,  particularly  those 
of  Billom,  Mauriac,  Rodez,  Tournon,  and  Pamiers.  In  1561 
it  secured  a  footing  in  Paris,  notwithstanding  the  resistance 
of  the  Parliament,  of  the  university,  and  of  the  bishops  them- 
selves. A  hundred  years  later  it  counted  nearly  fourteen 
thousand  pupils  in  the  province  of  Paris  alone.  The  college 
of  Clermout,  in  1651,  enrolled  more  than  two  thousand  young 
men.  The  middle  and  higher  classes  assured  to  the  colleges 
of  the  society  an  ever-increasing  membership.  At  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Jesuits  could  inscribe  on  the 
roll  of  honor  of  their  classes  a  hundred  illustrious  names, 
among  others,  those  of  Conde"  and  Luxembourg,  Fiddlier  and 
Bossuet,  Lamoignon  and  Se*guier,  Descartes,  Corueille,  and 
Moliere.  In  1710  they  controlled  six  hundred  and  twelve 
colleges  and  a  large  number  of  universities.  They  were  the 
real  masters  of  education,  and  they  maintained  this  educational 
supremacy  till  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  centurj-. 

151.  DIFFERENT  JUDGMENTS  ON  THE  EDUCATIONAL  MERITS 
OF  THE  JESUITS. — Voltaire  said  of  these  teachers:  "The 
Fathers  taught  me  nothing  but  Latin  and  nonsense."  But 
from  the  seventeenth  century,  opinions  are  divided,  and  the 
encomiums  of  Bacon  and  Descartes  must  be  offset  by  the 
severe  judgment  of  Leibnitz.  "In  the  matter  of  educa- 
tion," says  this  great  philosopher,  "  the  Jesuits  have  remained 
below  mediocrity."  1  Directly  to  the  contrary,  Bacon  had 

1  Leibnitii  Opera,  Genevae,  1768,  Tome  VI.  p.  G5. 


142  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

written:  "As  to  whatever  relates  to  the  instruction  of  the 
young,  we  must  consult  the  schools  of  the  Jesuits,  for  there 
can  be  nothing  that  is  better  done."  ] 

152.  AUTHORITIES  TO  CONSULT.  —  The  Jesuits  have  never 
written  anything  on  the  principles  and  objects  of  education. 
We  must  not   demand  of  them   an   exposition   of  general 
views,  or  a  confession  of   their  educational  faith.     But   to 
make   amends,  they  have   drawn   up  with  precision,   with 
almost  infinite  attention  to  details,  the  rules  and  regulations 
of  their  course  of  study.     Already,  in  1559,  the  Constitu- 
tions, probably  written  by  Loyola  himself,  devoted  a  whole 
book  to  the  organization  of  the  colleges  of  the  society.2    But 
in  particular,  the  Ratio  /Studiorum,  published  in  1599,  con- 
tains a  complete  scholastic  programme,  which  has  remained 
for  three  centuries  the  invariable  educational  code  of  the 
congregation.     Without  doubt,  the  Jesuits,  always  ready  to 
make  apparent  concessions  to  the  spirit  of  the  times,  with- 
out sacrificing   anything  of   their  own   spirit,  and  without 
renouncing  their  inflexible  purpose,  have  introduced  modifi- 
cations into  their  original  rules  ;  but  the  spirit  of  their  edu- 
cational  practice  has   remained   the   same,    and,   in    1854, 
Beckx,  the  actual  general  of  the  order,  could  still  declare 
that  the  Ratio  is  the  immutable  rule  of  Jesuit  education. 

153.  PRIMARY   INSTRUCTION   NEGLECTED. — A  permanent 
and  characteristic  feature  of  the  educational  policy  of  the 
Jesuits  is,  that,  during  the  whole  course  of  their  history, 
they  have  deliberately  neglected  and  disdained  primary  in- 
struction.    The  earth  is  covered  with  their  Latin  colleges ; 
and  wherever  they  have  been  able,  they  have  put  their  hands 


1  Bacon  de  Atif/mentis  Scientiarum,  Lib.  VI.  chap.  rv. 

2  See  the  fourth  book  of  the  Constitutions. 


THE   TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  143 

on  the  institutions  for  university  education  ;  but  in  no  in- 
stance have  they  founded  a  primary  school.  Even  in  their 
establishments  for  secoudary  instruction,  they  entrust  the 
lower  classes  to  teachers  who  do  not  belong  to  their  order, 
and  reserve  to  themselves  the  direction  of  the  higher  classes. 
Must  we  believe,  as  they  have  declared  in  order  to  explain 
this  negligence,  that  the  only  reason  for  their  reserve  and 
their  indifference  is  to  be  sought  for  in  the  insufficiency  of 
their  teaching  force?  No;  the  truth  is  that  the  Jesuits 
neither  desire  nor  love  the  instruction  of  the  people.  To 
desire  and  to  love  this,  there  must  be  faith  in  conscience  and 
reason  ;  there  must  be  a  belief  in  human  equality.  Now 
the  Jesuits  distrust  the  human  intelligence,  and  administer 
only  the  aristocratic  education  of  the  ruling  classes,  whom 
they  hope  to  retain  under  their  own  control.  They  wish  to 
train  amiable  gentlemen,  accomplished  men  of  the  world ; 
they  have  no  conception  of  training  men.  Intellectual  cul- 
ture, in  their  view,  is  but  a  convenience,  imposed  on  certain 
classes  of  the  nation  by  their  rank.  It  is  not  a  good  in 
itself ;  it  ma}'  even  become  an  evil.  In  certain  hands  it  is 
a  dangerous  weapon.  The  ignorance  of  a  people  is  the  best 
safeguard  of  its  faith,  and  faith  is  the  supreme  end.  So  we 
shall  not  be  astonished  to  read  this  in  the  Constitutions:  — 

"  None  of  those  who  are  employed  in  domestic  service  on 
account  of  the  society,  ought  to  learn  to  read  and  write,  or, 
if  they  already  know  these  arts,  to  learn  more  of  them. 
They  shall  not  be  instructed  without  the  consent  of  the 
General,  for  it  suffices  for  them  to  serve  with  all  simplicity 
and  humility  our  Master,  Jesus  Christ." 

154.  CLASSICAL  STUDIES:  LATIN  AND  THE  HUMANITIES. — 
It  is  only  in  secondary  instruction  that  the  Jesuits  have 
taken  position  with  marked  success.  The  basis  of  their 
teaching  is  the  study  of  Latin  and  Greek.  Their  purpose  is 


144  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

to  monopolize  classical  studies  in  order  to  make  them  serve 
for  the  propagation  of  the  Catholic  faith.  To  write  in  Latin 
is  the  ideal  which  they  propose  to  their  pupils.  The  first 
consequence  of  this  is  the  proscription  of  the  mother  tongue. 
The  Ratio  forbids  the  use  of  French  even  in  conversation ; 
it  permits  it  only  on  holidays.  Hence,  also,  the  importance 
accorded  to  Latin  and  Greek  composition,  to  the  explication 
of  authors,  and  to  the  study  of  grammar,  rhetoric,  and 
poetrj*.  It  is  to  be  noted,  besides,  that  the  Jesuits  put 
scarcely  more  into  the  hands  of  their  pupils  than  select 
extracts,  expurgated  editions.  They  wish,  in  some  sort,  to 
efface  from  the  ancient  books  whatever  marks  the  epoch  and 
characterizes  the  time.  They  detach  fine  passages  of  elo- 
quence and  beautiful  extracts  of  poetry  ;  but  they  are  afraid, 
it  seems,  of  the  authors  themselves ;  they  fear  lest  the  pupil 
find  in  them  the  old  human  spirit,  —  the  spirit  of  nature. 
Moreover,  in  the  explication  of  authors,  they  pay  more 
attention  to  words  than  to  things.  They  direct  the  pupil's 
attention,  not  to  the  thoughts,  but  to  the  elegancies  of  lan- 
guage, to  the  elocutionary  effect;  in  a  word,  to  the  form, 
which,  at  least,  has  no  religious  character,  and  can  in  no- 
wise give  umbrage  to  Catholic  orthodoxy.  They  fear  to 
awaken  reflection  and  individual  judgment.  As  Macaulay 
has  said,  they  seem  to  have  found  the  point  up  to  which 
intellectual  culture  can  be  pushed  without  reaching  intellec- 
tual emancipation. 

155.  DISDAIN  OF  HISTORY,  OF  PHILOSOPHY,  AND  OF  THE 
SCIENCES  IN  GENERAL.  —  Preoccupied  before  all  else  with 
purely  formal  studies,  and  exclusively  devoted  to  the  exer- 
cises which  give  a  training  in  the  use  of  elegant  language, 
the  Jesuits  leave  real  and  concrete  studies  in  entire  neglect. 
History  is  almost  wholly  banished  from  their  programme. 
It  is  only  with  reference  to  the  Greek  and  Latin  texts  that 


THE   TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  145 

the  teacher  should  make  allusion  to  the  matters  of  history 
which  are  necessary  for  the  understanding  of  the  passage 
under  examination.  No  account  is  made  of  modern  history, 
nor  of  the  history  of  France.  "  History,"  says  a  Jesuit 
Father,  "is  the  destruction  of  him  who  studies  it."  This 
systematic  omission  of  historical  studies  suffices  to  put  in  its 
true  light  the  artificial  and  superficial  pedagogy  of  the 
Jesuits,  admirably  defined  by  Beckx,  who  expresses  himself 
thus : — 

"  The  gymnasia  will  remain  what  they  are  by  nature,  a 
gymnastic  for  the  intellect,  which  consists  far  less  in  the 
assimilation  of  real  matter,  in  the  acquisition  of  different 
knowledges,  than  in  a  culture  of  pure  form." 

The  sciences  and  philosophy  are  involved  in  the  same  dis- 
dain as  histoiy.  Scientific  studies  are  entirely  proscribed  in 
the  lower  classes,  and  the  student  enters  his  year  in  philoso- 
phy,1 having  studied  only  the  ancient  languages.  Philosophy 
itself  is  reduced  to  a  barren  study  of  words,  to  subtile  dis- 
cussions, and  to  commentaries  on  Aristotle.  Memory  and 
syllogistic  reasoning  are  the  only  faculties  called  into  play  ; 
no  facts,  no  real  inductions,  no  care  for  the  observation  of 
nature.  In  all  things  the  Jesuits  are  the  enemies  of  prog- 
ress. Intolerant  of  everything  new,  they  would  arrest  the 
progress  of  the  human  mind  and  make  it  immovable. 

156.  DISCIPLINE. — Extravagant  statements  have  been 
made  relative  to  the  reforms  in  discipline  introduced  by  the 
Jesuits  into  their  educational  establishments.  The  fact  is, 
that  they  have  caused  to  prevail  in  their  colleges  more  of 
order  and  of  system  than  there  was  in  the  establishments  of 
the  University.  On  the  other  hand,  they  have  attempted  to 
please  their  pupils,  to  gild  for  them,  so  to  speak,  the  bars  of 

1  See  note  to  §  141. 


146  THE  HISTOKY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

the  prison  which  confined  them.  Theatrical  representations, 
excursions  on  holidays,  practice  in  swimming,  riding,  and 
fencing,  —  nothing  was  neglected  that  could  render  their 
residence  at  school  endurable. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Jesuits  have  incurred  the 
grave  fault  of  detaching  the  child  from  the  family.  They 
wish  to  have  absolute  control  of  him.  The  ideal  of  the  per- 
fect scholar  is  to  forget  his  parents.  Here  is  what  was  said 
by  a  pupil  of  the  Jesuits,  who  afterwards  became  a  member 
of  the  Order,  J.  B.  de  Schultaus  :  — 

"His  mother  paid  him  a  visit  at  the  College  of  Trent. 
He  refused  to  take  her  hand,  and  would  not  even  raise  his 
eyes  to  hers.  The  mother,  astonished  and  grieved,  asked 
her  son  the  cause  of  such  a  cold  greeting.  '  I  refuse  to 
notice  you,'  said  the  pupil,  '  not  because  you  are  my  mother, 
but  because  3Tou  are  a  woman.'  And  the  biographer  adds: 
*  This  was  not  excessive  precaution ;  woman  preserves 
to-day  the  faults  she  had  at  the  time  of  our  first  father ;  it 
is  always  she  who  drives  man  from  Paradise.'  When  the 
mother  of  Schultaus  died,  he  did  not  show  the  least  emotion, 
having  long  ago  adopted  the  Holy  Virgin  for  his  true 
mother." 

157.  EMULATION  ENCOURAGED.  —  The  Jesuits  have  always 
considered  emulation  as  one  of  the  essential  elements  of  dis- 
cipline. "It  is  necessary,"  says  the  Raiio^  "to  encourage 
an  honorable  emulation ;  it  is  a  great  stimulus  to  study. 
Superior  on  this  point,  perhaps  on  this  alone,  to  the  Jansen- 
ists,  who  through  mistrust  of  human  nature  feared  to  excite 
pride  by  encouraging  emulation,  the  Jesuits  have  always 
counted  upon  the  self-love  of  the  pupil.  The  Ratio  mul- 
tiplies rewards,  —  solemn  distributions  of  prizes,  crosses, 
ribbons,  decorations,  titles  borrowed  from  the  Eoman 
Republic,  such  as  decurions  and  prcutors;  all  means,  even 


THE   TEACHING    CONGREGATIONS.  147 

the  most  puerile,  were  invented  to  nourish  in  pupils  an  ardor 
for  work,  and  to  incite  them  to  surpass  one  another.  Let 
us  add  that  the  pupil  was  rewarded,  not  only  for  his  own 
good  conduct,  but  for  the  bad  conduct  of  his  comrades  if  he 
informed  against  them.  The  decurion  or  the  prcetor  was 
charged  with  the  police  care  of  the  class,  and,  in  the  absence 
of  the  official  disciplinarian,  he  himself  chastised  his  com- 
rades ;  in  the  hands  of  his  teacher,  he  became  a  spy  and  an 
informer.  Thus  a  pupil,  liable  to  punishment  for  having 
spoken  French  contrary  to  orders,  will  be  relieved  from  his 
punishment  if  he  can  prove  by  witnesses  that  one  of  his 
comrades  has  committed  the  same  fault  on  the  same  day. 

158.  OFFICIAL  DISCIPLINARIAN. — The  rod  is  an  element, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  ancient  pedagogical  regime.  It  holds  a 
privileged  place  both  in  the  colleges  and  in  private  educa- 
tion. Louis  XIV.  officially  transmits  to  the  Duke  of  Mon- 
tausier  the  right  to  correct  his  son.  Henry  IV.  wrote  to  the 
governor  of  Louis  XIII. :  '•  I  complain  because  you  did  not 
inform  me  that  you  had  whipped  my  son  ;  for  I  desire  and 
order  you  to  whip  him  every  time  that  he  shall  be  guilty  of 
obstinacy  or  of  anything  else  that  is  bad  ;  for  I  well  know 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  that  can  do  him  more  good 
than  that.  This  I  know  from  the  lessons  of  experience,  for 
when  I  was  of  his  age,  I  was  soundly  flogged."  l 

The  Jesuits,  notwithstanding  their  disposition  to  make 
discipline  milder,  were  careful  not  to  renounce  a  punishment 
that  was  in  use  even  at  court.  Only,  while  the  Brethren  of 
the  Christian  Schools,  according  to  the  regulations  of  La 
Salle,  chastised  the  guilty  pupil  themselves,  the  Jesuits  did 
not  think  it  becoming  the  dignity  of  the  master  to  apply  the 
correction  himself.  They  reserved  to  a  laic  the  duty  of 

1  Letter  to  Madame  Montglat,  Nov.  14,  1607. 


148  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

handling  the  rods.  An  official  disciplinarian,  a  domestic,  a 
porter,  was  charged  in  all  the  colleges  with  the  functions  of 
chief  executioner.  And  while  the  Ratio  Studiorum  recom- 
mends moderation,  certain  witnesses  prove  that  the  special 
disciplinarian  did  not  always  carry  a  discreet  hand.  Here, 
for  example,  is  an  account  given  by  Saint  Simon  :  — 

"  The  eldest  son  of  the  Marquis  of  Boufflers  was  fourteen 
years  old.  He  was  handsome,  well  formed,  was  wonder- 
fully successful,  and  full  of  promise.  He  was  a  resident 
pupil  of  the  Jesuits  with  the  two  sons  of  d'Argenson.  I  do 
not  know  what  indiscretion  he  and  they  were  guilty  of.  The 
Fathers  wished  to  show  that  they  neither  feared  nor  stood  in 
awe  of  any  one,  and  they  flogged  the  boy,  because,  in  fact, 
they  had  nothing  to  fear  of  the  Marquis  of  Boufflers ;  but 
they  were  careful  not  to  treat  the  two  others  in  this  way, 
though  equally  culpable,  because  every  day  the}'  had  to 
count  with  d'Argenson,  who  was  lieutenant  of  police.  The 
boy  Boufflers  was  thrown  into  such  mental  agony  that  he 
fell  sick  on  the  same  day,  and  within  four  days  was  dead. 
.  .  .  There  was  a  universal  and  furious  outcry  against  the 
Jesuits,  but  nothing  ever  came  of  it." ] 

159.  GENERAL  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  JESUITS. — 
The  general  principles  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Jesuits  are 
completely  opposed  to  our  modern  ideas.  Blind  obedience, 
the  suppression  of  all  liberty  and  of  all  spontaneity,  such  is 
the  basis  of  their  moral  education. 

"  To  renounce  one's  own  wishes  is  more  meritorious  than 
to  raise  the  dead  ;  "  "  We  must  be  so  attached  to  the  Roman 
Church  as  to  hold  for  black  an  object  which  she  tells  us  is 
black,  even  when  it  is  really  white;"  "Our  confidence  in 
God  should  be  strong  enough  to  force  us,  in  the  lack  of  a 

1  Saint  Simon,  Altmoires,  Tome  IX.  83. 


THE   TEACHING    CONGREGATIONS.  149 

boat,  to  cross  the  ocean  on  a  single  plank  ;  "  "If  God  should 
appoint  for  our  master  an  animal  deprived  of  reason,  you 
should  not  hesitate  to  render  it  obedience,  as  to  a  master 
and  a  guide,  for  this  sole  reason,  that  God  has  ordered  it 
thus  ;  "  "  One  must  allow  himself  to  be  governed  by  divine 
Providence  acting  through  the  agency  of  the  superiors  of 
the  Order,  just  as  if  he  were  a  dead  body  that  could  be  put 
inlp  any  position  whatever,  and  treated  according  to  one's 
good  pleasure  ;  or  as  if  one  were  a  baton  in  the  hands  of  an 
old  man  who  uses  it  as  he  pleases." 

As  to  intellectual  education,  as  they  understand  it,  it  is 
wholly  artificial  and  superficial.  To  find  for  the  mind  occu- 
pations that  absorb  it,  that  soothe  it  like  a  dream,  without 
wholly  awakening  it ;  to  call  attention  to  words,  and  to 
niceties  of  expression,  so  as  to  reduce  by  so  much  the  oppor- 
tunity for  thinking ;  to  provoke  a  certain  degree  of  intel- 
lectual activity,  prudently  arrested  at  the  place  where  the 
reflective  reason  succeeds  an  embellished  memory  ;  in  a  word, 
to  excite  the  spirit  just  enough  to  arouse  it  from  its  inertia 
and  its  ignorance,  but  not  enough  to  endow  it  with  a  real 
self-activity  by  a  manly  display  of  all  its  faculties,  —  such  is 
the  method  of  the  Jesuits.  "As  to  instruction,"  sa3-s 
Bersot,  "  this  is  what  we  find  with  them  :  history  reduced  to 
facts  and  tables,  without  the  lesson  derived  from  them 
bearing  on  the  knowledge  of  the  world  ;  even  the  facts  sup- 
pressed or  altered  when  they  say  too  much ;  philosophy 
reduced  to  what  is  called  empirical  doctrine,  and  what 
de  Maistre  called  the  philosophy  of  the  nothing,  without 
danger  of  one's  acquiring  a  liking  for  it ;  physical  science 
reduced  to  recreations,  without  the  spirit  of  research  and 
liberty ;  literature  reduced  to  the  complaisant  explication  of 
the  ancient  authors,  and  ending  in  innocent  witticisms.  .  .  . 
With  respect  to  letters,  there  are  two  loves  which  have  noth- 


150  THE  HISTORY   OP   PEDAGOGY. 

ing  iu  common  save  their  name;  one  of  them  makes  men, 
the  other,  great  boys.  It  is  the  last  that  we  find  with  the 
Jesuits  ;  they  amuse  the  soul." 

160.  THE  ORATORIANS.  —  Between  the  Jesuits,  their  adver- 
saries, and  the  Jansenists,  their  friends,  the  Oratorians  oc- 
cupy an  intermediate  place.  They  break  already  with  the 
over-mechanical  education,  and  with  the  wholly  superficial 
instruction  which  Ignatius  Loyola  had  inaugurated.  Through 
some  happy  innovations  they  approach  the  more  elevated  and 
more  profound  education  of  Port  Royal.  Founded  in  1G14,  by 
Berulle,  the  Order  of  the  Oratory  soon  counted  quite  a  large 
number  of  colleges  of  secondary  instruction,  and,  in  particu- 
lar, in  1638,  the  famous  college  of  Juilly.  While  with  the 
Jesuits  it  is  rare  to  meet  the  names  of  celebrated  professors, 
several  renowned  teachers  have  made  illustrious  the  Oratory 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  We  note  the  Pere  Lamy,  author 
of  Entretiens  sur  les  Sciences  (1683)  ;  the  Pdre  Thomassin, 
whom  the  Oratorians  call  the  "  incomparable  theologian," 
and  who  published,  from  1681  to  1690,  a  series  of  Methods 
for  studying  the  languages,  philosophy,  and  letters  ;  Masca- 
ron  and  Massillon,  who  taught  rhetoric  at  the  Oratory  ;  the 
Pere  Lecointe  and  the  Pere  Lelong,  who  taught  history  there. 
All  these  men  unite,  in  general,  some  love  of  liberty  to  ardor 
of  religious  sentiment ;  they  wish  to  introduce  more  air  and 
more  light  into  the  cloister  and  the  school ;  they  have  a  taste 
for  the  facts  of  history  and  the  truths  of  science  ;  finally,  they 
attempt  to  found  an  education  at  once  liberal  and  Christian, 
religious  without  abuse  of  devotion,  elegant  without  refine- 
ment, solid  without  excess  of  erudition,  worthy,  finally,  to 
be  counted  as  one  of  the  first  practical  tentatives  of  modern 
pedagogy. 

The  limits  of  this  study  forbid  our  entering  into  details. 
Let  us  merely  note  a  few  essential  points.  That  which  dis- 


THE  TEACHING  CONGREGATIONS.        151 

tinguishes  the  Oratorians,  is,  first,  a  sincere  and  disinterested 
love  of  truth. 

"  We  love  the  truth,"  says  the  Pere  LanT)- ;  "  the  days  do 
not  suffice  to  consult  her  as  long  as  we  would  wish  ;  or,  rather, 
we  never  grow  weary  of  the  pleasure  we  find  in  studying  hei1. 
There  has  always  been  that  love  for  letters  in  this  House : 
those  who  have  governed  it  have  tried  to  nourish  it.  When 
there  is  found  among  us  some  penetrating  and  liberally  en- 
dowed spirit  who  has  a  rare  genius  for  the  sciences,  he  is 
discharged  from  all  other  duties." 

Nowhere  have  ancient  letters  been  more  loved  than  at 
the  Oratory. 

"  In  his  leisure  hours  the  Pere  Thomassin  read  only  the 
authors  of  the  humanities ; "  and  yet  French  was  not  there 
sacrificed  to  Latin.  The  use  of  the  Latin  language  was  not 
obligatory  till  after  the  fourth  year,  and  even  then  not  for  the 
lessons  in  history,  which,  till  the  end  of  the  courses,  had  to 
be  given  in  French.  History,  so  long  neglected  even  in  the 
colleges  of  the  University,  particularly  the  history  of  France, 
was  taught  to  the  pupils  of  the  Oratory.  Geography  was 
not  separated  from  it;  and  the  class-rooms  were  furnished 
with  large  mural  maps.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sciences  had 
a  place  in  the  course  of  study.  A  Jesuit  father  would  not 
have  expressed  himself  as  the  Pere  Lamy  has  done :  — 

"  It  is  a  pleasure  to  enter  the  laboratory  of  a  chemist.  In 
the  places  where  I  have  happened  to  be,  I  did  not  miss  an 
opportunity  to  attend  the  anatomical  lectures  that  were  given, 
and  to  witness  the  dissection  of  the  principal  parts  of  the 
human  body.  ...  I  know  of  nothing  of  greater  use  than 
algebra  and  arithmetic." 

Finally,  philosophy  itself,  —  the  Cartesian  philosophy,  so 
mercilessly  decried  by  the  Jesuits,  — was  in  vogue  at  the  Ora- 

1  Entretiens  sur  les  Sciences,  p.  197. 


152  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tory.  "  If  Cartesiauism  is  a  pest,"  wrote  the  regents  of  the 
College  of  Angers,  "•  there  are  more  than  two  hundred  of  us 
who  are  infected  with  it."  ...  "  They  have  forbidden  the 
Fathers  of  the  Oratory  to  teach  the  philosophy  of  Descartes, 
and,  consequently,  the  blood  to  circulate,"  wrote  Madame  de 
Sevigne,  in  1673. 

Let  us  also  furnish  proof  of  the  progress  and  amelioration 
of  the  discipline  at  the  Oratory  :  — 

"There  are  many  other  ways  besides  the  rod,"  says  the 
Pere  Lamy  ;  "and,  to  lead  pupils  back  to  their  duty,  a  ca- 
ress, a  threat,  the  hope  of  a  reward,  or  the  fear  of  a  humili- 
ation, has  greater  efficiency  than  whips." 

The  ferule,  it  is  true,  and  whips  also,  were  not  forbidden, 
but  made  part  of  the  legitima  poenarum  genera.  But  it  does 
not  appear  that  use  was  often  made  of  them  ;  either  through 
a  spirit  of  mildness,  or  through  prudence,  and  through  the 
fear  of  exasperating  the  child. 

"There  is  needed,"  says  the  Pere  Lamy  again,  "a  sort  of 
politics  to  govern  this  little  community, — to  lead  them 
through  their  inclinations  ;  to  foresee  the  effect  of  rewards 
and  punishments,  and  to  employ  them  according  to  their 
proper  use.  There  are  times  of  stubbornness  when  a  child 
would  sooner  be  killed  than  yield." 

"What  made  it  easier  at  the  Oratory  to  maintain  the  au- 
thority of  the  master  without  resorting  to  violent  punishments, 
is  that  the  same  professor  accompanied  the  pupils  through  the 
whole  series  of  their  classes.  The  P6re  Thomassin,  for 
example,  was,  in  turn,  professor  of  grammar,  rhetoric,  phil- 
osophy, mathematics,  history,  Italian,  and  Spanish,  —  a  touch- 
ing example,  it  must  be  allowed,  of  an  absolute  devotion  to 
scholastic  labor.  But  this  universality,  somewhat  superficial, 
served  neither  the  real  interests  of  the  masters  nor  those  of 
their  pupils.  The  great  pedagogical  law  is  the  division  of 
labor. 


THE  TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  153 

161.  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  LITTLE  SCHOOLS.  —  From  the 
very  organization  of  their  society,  the  Jansenists  gave  evi- 
dences of  an  ardent  solicitude  for  the  education  of  youth. 
Their  founder,  Saint  Cyran,  said  :   "  Education  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  one  thing  necessary.  ...    I  wish  you  might  read  in  my  heart 
the  affection  I  feel  for  children.  .  .  .     You  could  not  deserve 
more  of  God  than  in  working  for  the  proper  bringing  up  of 
children."     It  was  in  this  disinterested  feeling  of  charity  for 
the  good  of  the  young,  in  this  display  of  sincere  tenderness 
for  children,  that  the  Jansenists,  in  1643,  founded  the  Little 
Schools  at  Port  Royal  in  the  Fields,  in  the  vicinitj*,  and  then 
in  Paris.1      They  received  into  those  schools  only  a  small 
number  of  pupils,  preoccupied  as  they  were,  not  with  domi- 
nating the  world  and  extending  their  influence,  but  with  do- 
ing modestly  and  obscurely  the  good  they  could.    Persecution 
did  not  long  grant  them  the  leisure  to  continue  the  work  they 
had  undertaken.     By  1660  the  enemies  of  Port  Royal  had 
triumphed  ;  the  Jesuits  obtained  an  order  from  the  king  clos- 
ing the  schools  and  dispersing  the  teachers.    Pursued,  impris- 
oned, expatriated,  the  solitaries  of  Port  Royal  had  but  the 
opportunity  to  gather  up  in  memorable  documents  the  results 
of  their  educational  experience  all  too  short.2 

162.  THE  TEACHERS  AND  THE  BOOKS  OF  PORT  ROYAL. — 
Singular  destiny,  —  that  of  those  teachers  whom  a  relentless 

1  For  the  Little  Schools  of  Port  Royal,  see  a  recent  account  by  Carre 
(Revue  redaijoijique,  1883,  Nos.  2  and  8). 

2  No  more  pathetic  piece  of  history  has  ever  been  written  than  that 
which  relates  the  vindictive  and  relentless  persecution  of  the  peaceful 
and  pious  solitaries  of  Port  Royal:    "  The  house  was  razed  to  the  ground, 
and  even  the  very  foundations  ploughed  up.    The  gardens  and  walks  were 
demolished ;  and  the  dead  were  even  torn  from  their  graves,  that  not  a  ves- 
tige might  be  left  to  mark  the  spot  where  this  celebrated  institution  had 
stood."  —  Lancelot's  Tour  to  La  Grande  Chartreuse,  p.  243.    See  also  Nar- 
rative of  the  Demolition  of  Port  Royal  (London,  1816).     (P.) 


154  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

fate  permitted  to  exercise  their  functions  for  only  five 
years,  yet  who,  through  their  works,  have  remained  perhaps 
the  best  authorized  exponents  of  French  education !  The 
first  of  these  is  Nicole,  the  moralist  and  logician,  one  of  the 
authors  of  the  Port  Royal  Logic,  who  taught  philosophy 
and  the  humanities  in  the  Little  Schools,  and  who  published 
in  1670,  under  the  title,  The  Education  of  a  Prince,  a  series  of 
reflections  on  education,  applicable,  as  he  himself  says,  to 
children  of  all  classes.  Another  is  Lancelot,  the  grammarian, 
the  author  of  the  Methods  for  learning  the  Latin,  Greek, 
Italian,  and  Spanish  languages.  Then  there  is  Arnauld,  the 
great  Arnauld,  the  ardent  theologian,  who  worked  on  the 
Logic,  and  the  General  Grammar,  and  who  finally  composed 
the  Regulation  of  Studies  in  the  Humanities.  In  connection 
with  these  celebrated  names,  we  must  mention  other  Janse- 
nists  not  so  well  known,  such  as  De  Sacy  and  Guyot,  both 
of  whom  were  the  authors  of  a  large  number  of  translations  ; 
Coustel,  who  published  the  Rules  for  the  Education  of  Chil- 
dren (1687)  ;  Varet,  the  author  of  Christian  Education 
(1668).  Let  us  add  to  this  list,  still  incomplete,  the  Regi- 
men for  Children,  by  Jacqueline  Pascal  (1657),  and  we  shall 
have  some  idea  of  the  educational  activity  of  Port  Royal. 

163.  THE  STUDY  OF  THE  FRENCH  LANGUAGE.  —  As  a 
general  rule,  we  may  have  a  good  opinion  of  the  teachers  who 
recommend  the  study  of  the  mother  tongue.  In  this  respect, 
the  solitaries  of  Port  Royal  are  in  advance  of  their  tinu-. 
"We  first  teach  to  read  in  Latin,"  said  the  Abb6  Floury, 
"  because,  compared  with  French,  we  pronounce  it  more  as 
it  is  written."  l  A  curious  reason,  which  did  not  satisfy 
Fleury  himself  ;  for  he  acknowledged  the  propriety  of  putting, 
as  soon  as  possible,  into  the  hands  of  children,  the  French 

1  Du  choix  et  de  la  methode  des  etudes. 


THE  TEACHING   CONGEEGATIONS.  155 

books  that  they  can  understand.  This  was  what  was  done 
at  Port  Royal.  With  their  love  of  exactness  and  clearness, 
with  their  disposition,  wholly  Cartesian,  to  make  children 
study  only  the  things  they  can  comprehend,  the  Jansenists 
saw  at  once  the  great  absurdity  of  choosing  Latin  works  as 
the  first  reading-books.  "To  learn  Latin  before  learning 
the  mother  tongue,"  said  Comeuius,  wittily,  "  is  like  wishing 
to  mount  a  horse  before  knowing  how  to  w.alk."  And  again, 
as  Sainte-Beuve  says,  "It  is  to  compel  unfortunate  children 
to  deal  with  the  unintelligible  in  order  to  proceed  towards  the 
unknown."  For  these  unintelligible  texts,  the  Jansenists  sub- 
stituted, not,  it  is  true,  original  French  works,  but  at  least 
good  translations  of  Latin  authors.  For  the  first  time  in 
France,  the  French  language  was  made  the  subject  of  serious 
study.  Before  being  made  to  write  in  Latin,  pupils  were 
drilled  in  writing  in  French.  They  were  set  to  compose  little 
narratives,  little  letters,  the  subjects  of  which  were  borrowed 
from  their  recollections,  by  being  asked  to  relate  on  the  spot 
what  they  had  retained  of  what  they  had  read. 

164.  NEW  SYSTEM  OP  SPELLING. — In  their  constant  pre- 
occupation to  make  study  easier,  the  Jansenists  reformed  the 
current  method  of  learning  to  read.  "  What  makes  reading 
more  difficult,"  says  Arnauld  in  Chapter  VI.  of  the  General 
Grammar,  "  is  that  while  each  letter  has  its  own  proper  name, 
it  is  given  a  different  name  when  it  is  found  associated  with 
other  letters.  For  example,  if  the  pupil  is  made  to  read  the 
syllable//-?/,  he  is  made  to  say  ef,  ar,  y,  which  invariably  con- 
fuses him.  It  is  best,  therefore,  to  teach  children  to  know  the 
letters  only  by  the  names  of  their  real  pronunciation,  to  name 
them  only  by  their  natural  sounds."  Port  Royal  proposes, 
then,  "  to  have  children  pronounce  only  the  vowels  and  the 
diphthongs,  and  not  the  consonants,  which  they  need  not 


156  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

pronounce,  except  in  the  different  combinations  which  the}' 
form  with  the  same  vowels  or  diphthongs,  in  syllables  mid 
words. 

This  method  has  become  celebrated  under  the  name  of  the 
Port  Royal  Method  ;  and  it  appears,  from  a  letter  of  Jacque- 
line Pascal,  that  the  original  notion  was  due  to  Pascal  him- 
self.1 

1G5.  DISCIPLINE  IN  PERSONAL  REFLECTION.  —  That  which 
profoundly  distinguishes  the  method  of  the  Jansenists  from 
the  method  of  the  Jesuits,  is  that  at  Port  Royal  the  purpose 
is  less  to  make  good  Latinists  than  to  train  sound  intelli- 
gences. The  effort  is  to  call  into  activity  the  judgment  and 
personal  reflection.  As  soon  as  the  child  is  capable  of  it,  he 
is  made  to  think  and  comprehend.  In  the  lessons  of  the 
class-room,  not  a  word  is  allowed  to  pass  till  the  child  has 
understood  its  meaning.  Only  those  tasks  are  proposed  to 
the  child  which  are  adapted  to  his  childish  intelligence.  His 
attention  is  occupied  only  with  the  things  that  are  within  the 
compass  of  his  powers. 

The  grammars  of  Port  Royal  are  written  in  French,  "  be- 
cause it  is  ridiculous,"  says  Nicole,  "  to  teach  the  principles 
of  a  language  in  the  very  language  that  is  to  be  learned.  :uid 
that  for  the  present  is  unknown."  Lancelot,  in  his  Met/tods, 
abbreviates  and  simplifies  grammatical  studies  :  — 

"  I  have  found  out,  at  last,  how  useful  this  maxim  of 
Ramus  is, — Few  precepts  and  much  practice :  and,  also,  that 
as  soon  as  childi'en  begin  to  know  these  rules  somewhat,  it  is 
well  to  make  them  observe  them  in  practice." 

It  is  by  the  reading  of  authors  that  the  grammar  of  Port 
Royal  completes  the  theoretical  study  of  the  rules  that  are 
rigidly  reduced  to  their  minimum.  The  professor,  with  ref- 

1  See  Cousin,  Jacqueline  Pascal,  p.  262. 


THE   TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  157 

erence  to  such  or  such  a  passage  of  an  author,  will  make  ap- 
propriate oral  remarks.  In  this  way  the  example,  not  the 
dry  and  uninteresting  one  of  the  grammar,  but  the  living 
example,  expressive,  and,  drawn  from  a  writer  that  is  being 
read  with  interest,  will  precede  or  accompany  the  rule,  and 
the  particular  case  will  explain  the  general  law.  This  is  an 
excellent  method,  because  it  accords  with  the  real  movement 
of  the  mind,  and  adapts  the  sequence  of  studies  to  the  prog- 
ress of  the  intelligence,  and  also  because,  according  to  the 
advice  of  Descartes,  the  child  in  this  way  proceeds  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex. 

166.  GENERAL  SPIRIT  OF  THE  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION 
AT  PORT  ROYAL.  —  Without  doubt,  we  need  not  expect  to 
find  among  the  solitaries  of  Port  Royal  a  disinterested  devo- 
tion to  science.  In  their  view,  instruction  is  but  a  means  of 
forming  the  judgment.  "  The  sciences  should  be  employed," 
says  Nicole,  "only  as  an  instrument  for  perfecting  the 
reason."  Historical,  literary,  and  scientific  knowledge  has 
no  intrinsic  value.  The  thing  required  is  simply  to  employ 
those  subjects  for  educating  just,  equitable,  and  judicious 
men.  Nicole  declares  that  it  would  be  better  absolutely  to 
ignore  the  sciences  than  to  become  absorbed  in  the  useless 

~ 

portions  of  them.  Speaking  of  astronomical  researches,  and 
of  the  works  of  those  mathematicians  who  believe  that  "  it  is 
the  finest  thing  in  the  world  to  know  whether  there  is  a  bridge 
and  an  arch  suspended  around  the  planet  Saturn,"  he  con- 
cludes that  it  is  preferable  to  be  ignorant  of  those  things 
than  to  be  ignorant  that  they  are  vain. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Jansenists  have  struck  from 
their  programme  of  studies  everything  that  is  merely  sterile 
verbiage,  exercises  of  memory  or  of  artificial  imagination. 
Little  attention  is  given  to  Latin  verse  at  Port  Royal.  Ver- 


158  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

sion  takes  precedence  of  the  theme,1  and  the  oral  theme 
often  replaces  the  written.  The  pupil  is  to  be  taught.  "  not 
to  be  blinded  by  a  vain  flash  of  words  void  of  sense,  not  to 
rest  satisfied  with  mere  words  or  obscure  principles,  and 
never  to  be  satisfied  till  he  has  gained  a  clear  insight  into 
things." 

1(57.  PEDAGOGICAL  PRINCIPLES  OF  NICOLE.  —  In  his  trea- 
tise on  the  Education  of  a  Prince,  Nicole  has  summarized, 
under  the  form  of  aphorisms,  some  of  the  essential  princi- 
ples of  his  system  of  education. 

Let  us  first  notice  this  maxim,  a  true  pedagogical  axiom : 
"•  The  purpose  of  instruction  is  to  carry  forward  intelligences 
to  the  farthest  point  they  are  capable  of  attaining."  This 
is  saying  that  every  child,  whether  of  the  nobility  or  of  the 
people,  has  the  right  to  be  instructed  according  to  his  apti- 
tude and  ability. 

Another  axiom :  We  must  proportion  difficulties  to  the 
growing  development  of  the  child's  intelligence.  "  The 
greatest  minds  have  but  a  limited  range  of  intelligence.  In 
all  of  them  there  are  regions  of  twilight  and  shadow ;  but 
the  intelligence  of  the  child  is  almost  wholly  pervaded  by 
shadows  ;  he  catches  glimpses  of  but  few  rays  of  light.  So 
everything  depends  on  managing  these  rays,  on  increasing 
them,  and  on  exposing  to  them  whatever  we  wish  to  have  the 
child  comprehend." 

A  corollary  to  the  preceding  axiom  is,  that  the  first 
appeal  must  be  made  to  the  senses.  "The  intelligence  of 
children  always  being  very  dependent  on  the  senses,  we 
must,  as  far  as  possible,  address  our  instruction  to  the 
senses,  and  cause  it  to  reach  the  mind,  not  only  through 

1  Version:  translation  from  Latin  or  Greek  into  French.  Theme: 
translation  of  French  into  Latin  or  Greek.  (P.) 


THE   TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  159 

hearing,  but  also  through  seeing."  Consequently ,  geogra- 
phy is  a  study  well  adapted  to  early  years,  provided  we 
employ  books  in  which  the  largest  cities  are  pictured.  If 
children  study  the  history  of  a  country,  we  must  not  neglect 
to  show  them  the  situation  of  places  on  the  map.  Nicole  also 
recommends  that  they  be  shown  pictures  that  represent  the 
machines,  the  arms,  and  the  dress  of  the  ancients,  and  also 
the  portraits  of  kings  and  illustrious  men. 

168.  MORAL  PESSIMISM.  —  Man  is  wicked,  human  nature 
is  corrupt :  such  is  the  cry  of  despair  that  comes  to  our  ears 
from  all  the  writings  of  the  Jansenists. 

"The  devil,"  says  Saint  Cyran,  "already  possesses  the 
soul  of  even  the  unborn  child."  .  .  . 

And  again  :  "  We  must  always  pray  for  souls,  and  always 
be  on  the  watch,  standing  guard  as  in  a  city  menaced  by  an 
enemy.  On  the  outside  the  devil  makes  his  rounds."  .  .  . 

"  As  soon  as  children  begin  to  have  reason,"  says  another 
Jansenist,  "  we  observe  in  them  only  blindness  and  weak- 
ness. Their  minds  are  closed  to  spiritual  things,  and  they 
cannot  comprehend  them.  But,  on  the  contrary,  their  eyes 
are  open  to  evil ;  their  senses  are  susceptible  to  all  sorts  of 
corruption,  and  they  have  a  natural  inertia  that  inclines 
them  to  it." 

"You  ought,"  writes  Varet,  "to  consider  your  children 
as  wholly  inclined  to  evil,  and  carried  forward  towards  it. 
All  their  inclinations  are  corrupt,  and,  not  being  governed 
by  reason,  they  will  permit  them  to  find  pleasure  and  diver- 
sion only  in  the  things  that  carry  them  towards  vice." 

169.  EFFECTS  ON  DISCIPLINE.  — The  doctrine  of  the  origi- 
nal perversity  of   man  may  produce   contrary  results,  and 
direct  the  practical  conduct  of  those  who  accept  it  in  two 
opposite  directions.     They  are  either  inspired  with  severity 


160  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

toward  beings  deeply  tainted  and  vicious,  or  they  are  excited 
to  pity  and  to  tenderness  for  those  fallen  creatures  who  suffer 
from  an  incurable  evil.  The  solitaries  of  Port  Royal  obeyed 
the  second  tendency.  They  were  as  affectionate  and  good 
to  the  children  confided  to  their  care  as,  in  theory,  they  were 
harsh  and  rigorous  towards  human  nature.  In  the  presence 
of  their  pupils  they  felt  touched  with  an  infinite  tenderness 
for  those  poor  sick  souls,  whom  they  would  willingly  cure  of 
their  ills,  and  raise  from  their  fall,  at  the  cost  of  any  and 
every  sacrifice. 

The  conception  of  the  native  wickedness  of  man  had  still 
another  result  at  Port  Royal.  It  increased  the  zeal  of  the 
teachers.  It  prompted  them  to  multiply  their  assiduity  and 
vigilance  in  order  to  keep  guard  over  3'ouug  souls,  and  there 
destroy,  whenever  possible,  the  seeds  of  evil  that  sin  had 
sown  in  them.  When  one  is  charged  with  the  difficult  mission 
of  moral  education,  it  is,  perhaps,  dangerous  to  have  too 
much  confidence  in  human  nature,  and  to  form  too  favorable 
an  opinion  of  its  qualities  and  dispositions ;  for  then  one  is 
tempted  to  accord  to  the  child  too  large  a  liberty,  and  to 
practise  the  maxim,  "Let  it  take  its  own  course,  let  it 
pass  "  (Laissez  faire,  laissez  passer) .  It  is  better  to  err  on 
the  other  side,  in  excess  of  mistrust;  for,  in  this  case, 
knowing  the  dangers  that  menace  the  child,  we  watch  over 
him  with  more  attention,  abandon  him  less  to  the  inspiration 
of  his  caprices,  and  expect  more  of  education ;  we  demand 
of  effort  and  labor  what  we  judge  nature  incapable  of  pro- 
ducing by  herself. 

Vigilance,  patience,  mildness,  —  these  are  the  instruments 
of  discipline  in  the  schools  of  Port  Royal.  There  were 
scarcely  any  punishments  in  the  Little  Schools.  "  To  speak 
little,  to  tolerate  much,  to  pray  still  more,"  —  these  are  the 
three  things  that  Saint  Cyran  recommended.  The  threat  to 


THE   TEACHING    CONGREGATIONS.  161 

send  children  home  to  their  parents  sufficed  to  maintain 
orderln  a  flock  somewhat  small.  In  fact,  all  whose  exam- 
ple would  have  proved  bad  were  sent  away ;  an  excellent 
system  of  elimination  when  it  is  practicable.  The  pious 
solitaries  endured  without  complaint,  faults  in  which  they 
saw  the  necessary  consequences  of  the  original  fall.  Pene- 
trated, however,  as  they  were,  with  the  value  of  human 
souls,  their  tenderness  for  children  was  mingled  with  a  cer- 
tain respect ;  for  they  saw  in  them  the  creatures  of  God, 
beings  called  from  eternity  to  a  sublime  destiny  or  to  a  ter- 
rible punishment. 

170.  FAULTS  IN  THE  DISCIPLINE  OF  PORT  ROYAL. — The 
Jansenists  did  not  shun  the  logical  though  dangerous  con- 
sequences that  were  involved,  in  germ,  in  their  pessimistic 
theories  of  human  nature.  They  fell  into  an  excess  of  pru- 
dence or  of  rigidity.  They  pushed  gravity  and  dignity  to 
a  formalism  that  was  somewhat  repulsive.  At  Port  Roj'al 
pupils  were  forbidden  to  thee  and  thou  one  another.  The 
solitaries  did  not  like  familiarities,  faithful  in  this  respect  to 
the  Imitation  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  which  it  is  somewhere  said 
that  it  does  not  become  a  Christian  to  be  on  familiar  terms 
with  any  one  whatever.  The  young  were  thus  brought  up 
in  habits  of  mutual  respect,  which  may  have  had  their  good 
side,  but  which  had  the  grave  fault  of  being  a  little  ridicu- 
lous in  children,  since  they  forced  them  to  live  among  them- 
selves as  little  gentlemen,  while  at  the  same  time  they  oppose 
the  development  of  those  intimate  friendships,  of  those  last- 
ing attachments  of  which  all  those  who  have  lived  at  college 
know  the  sweetness  and  the  charm. 

The  spirit  of  asceticism  is  the  general  character  of  all  the 
Jansenists.  Varet  declares  that  balls  are  places  of  infamy. 
Pascal  denies  himself  every  agreeable  thought,  and  what  he 
called  an  agreeable  thought  was  to  reflect  on  geometry. 


162  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

Lancelot  refuses  to  take  to  the  theatre  the  princes  of  Conti, 
of  whom  he  was  the  preceptor. 

But  perhaps  a  graver  fault  at  Port  Royal  was,  that  through 
fear  of  awakening  self-love,  the  spirit  of  emulation  was  pur- 
posely suppressed.  It  is  God  alone,  it  was  said,  who  is  to 
be  praised  for  the  qualities  and  talents  manifested  by  men. 
"  If  God  has  placed  something  of  good  in  the  soul  of  a  child, 
we  must  praise  Him  for  it  and  keep  silent."  By  this  delib- 
erate silence  men  put  themselves  on  guard  against  pride  ; 
but  if  pride  is  to  be  feared,  is  indolence  the  less  so  ?  And 
when  we  purposely  avoid  stimulating  self-love  through  the 
hope  of  reward,  or  through  a  word  of  praise  given  in  due 
season,  we  run  a  great  risk  of  not  overcoming  the  indo- 
lence that  is  natural  to  the  child,  and  of  not  obtaining  from 
him  any  serious  effort.  Pascal,  the  greatest  of  the  friends 
of  Port  Royal,  said:  "  The  children  of  Port  Royal,  who  do 
not  feel  that  stimulus  of  envy  and  glory,  fall  into  a  state  of 
indifference." 

171.  GENERAL  JUDGMENT  ON  PORT  ROYAL. — After  all 
has  been  said,  we  must  admire  the  teachers  of  Port  Royal, 
who  were  doubtless  deceived  on  some  points,  but  who  were 
animated  by  a  powerful  feeling  of  their  duty  to  educate,  and 
by  a  perfect  charity.  Ardor  and  sincerity  of  religious  faith  ; 
a  great  respect  for  the  human  person  ;  the  practice  of  piety 
held  in  honor,  but  kept  subordinate  to  the  reality  of  the 
inner  feeling  ;  devotion  advised,  but  not  imposed  ;  a  marked 
mistrust  of  nature,  corrected  by  displays  of  tenderness  and 
tempered  by  affection  ;  above  all,  the  profound,  unwearied 
devotion  of  Christian  souls  who  give  themselves  wholly  and 
without  reserve  to  other  souls  to  raise  them  up  and  save 
them, — this  is  what  was  done  by  the  discipline  of  Port 
Royal.  But  it  is  rather  in  the  methods  of  teaching,  and  in 
the  administration  of  classical  studies,  that  we  must  look  for 


THE   TEACHING   CONGREGATIONS.  163 

the  incontestable  superiority  of  the  Jansenists.  The  teachers 
of  the  Little  Schools  were  admirable  humanists,  not  of  form, 
as  the  Jesuits  were,  but  of  judgment.  They  represent,  it 
seems  to  us,  in  all  its  beauty  and  in  all  its  force,  that  intel- 
lectual education,  already  divined  by  Montaigne,  which 
prepares  for  life  men  of  sound  judgment  and  of  upright 
conscience.  They  founded  the  teaching  of  the  humanities. 
"Port  Royal,"  says  an  historian  of  pedagogy,  Burnier, 
"  simplifies  study  without,  however,  relieving  it  of  its  whole- 
some difficulties  ;  it  strives  to  make  it  interesting,  while  it 
does  not  convert  it  into  child's  play  ;  it  purposes  to  confide 
to  the  memory  only  what  has  first  been  apprehended  by  the 
intelligence.  ...  It  has  given  to  the  world  ideas  that  it  has 
not  again  let  go,  and  fruitful  principles  from  which  we  have 
but  to  draw  their  logical  consequences." 

[172.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  1.  In  the  history  of  the 
three  great  teaching  congregations  we  have  an  illustration 
of  the  supposed  power  of  education  over  the  destinies  of 
men. 

2.  To  resist  the  encroachments  of  Protestantism  that  fol- 
lowed the  diffusion  of  instruction  among  the  people,  Lo}*ola 
organized  his  teaching  corps  of  Catholic  zealots  ;  and  this 
mode  of  competition  for  purposes  of  moral,  sectarian,  and 
political   control    has    covered    the    earth,    in    all   Christian 
countries,  with  institutions  of  learning. 

3.  The  tendency  towards  extremes,  and  the  difficulty  of 
attaining  symmetry  and  completeness,  are  seen  in  the  pref- 
erence of  the  Jesuits  for  form,  elegance,  and  mere  discipline, 
in  their  excessive  use  of  emulation  ;  and  in  the  pessimism  of 
the  Jansenists,  their  distrust  of  human  nature,  and  their  fear 
of  human  pride.] 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

FENELON. 

EDUCATION  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  J  FENELON  (1651-1715) ;  HOW 
FENELON  BECAME  A  TEACHER;  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  TREATISE  ON 
THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS;  CRITICISM  OF  MONASTIC  EDUCATION; 
REFUTATION  OF  THE  PREJUDICES  RELATIVE  TO  WOMEN  J  GOOD 
OPINION  OF  HUMAN  NATURE;  INSTINCTIVE  CURIOSITY;  LESSONS  ON 
OBJECTS;  FEEBLENESS  OF  THE  CHILD;  INDIRECT  INSTRUCTION;  ALL 
ACTIVITY  MUST  BE  PLEASURABLE  ;  FABLES  AND  HISTORICAL  NAR- 
RATIVES ;  MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION  J  STUDIES  PROPER  FOR 
WOMEN;  EDUCATION  OF  THE  DUKE  DE  BOURGOGNE  (1689-1695); 
HAPPY  RESULTS  ;  THE  FABLES  ',  THE  DIALOGUES  OF  THE  DEAD  J 
VARIETY  OF  DISCIPLINARY  AGENTS ;  DIVERSIFIED  INSTRUCTION  J 
THE  TELEMACHUS;  FENELON  AND  BOSSUET ;  SPHERE  AND  LIMITS 
OF  EDUCATION;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


173.  EDUCATION  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.  — Outside 
of  the  teaching  congregations,  the  seventeenth  century 
counts  a  certain  number  of  independent  educators,  isolated 
thinkers,  who  have  transmitted  to  us  in  durable  records  the 
results  of  their  reflection  or  of  their  experience.  The  most 
of  these  belong  to  the  clergy,  —  they  are  royal  preceptors. 
In  a  monarchical  government  there  is  no  grander  affair  than 
the  education  of  princes..  Some  others  are  philosophers, 
whom  the  general  study  of  human  nature  has  led  to  reflect 
on  the  principles  of  education.  Without  pretending  to 
include  everything  within  the  narrow  compass  of  this  ele- 
mentary history,  we  would  make  known  either  the  funda- 
mental doctrines  or  the  essential  methods  which  have  been 
concerned  in  the  education  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 


FENELON.  165 

which,  at  the  same  time,  have  made  a  preparation  for  the 
educational  reforms  of  the  succeeding  centuries. 

174.  FENELON  (1G51-1715). — Fe'nelou  holds  an  important 
place  in  French  literature  ;  but  it  seems  that  of  all  the  varied 
aspects  of  his  genius,  the  part  he  played  as  an  educator  is 
the    most   important  and  the  most  considerable.     F£uelon 
wrote  the  first  classical  work  of  French  pedagogy,  and  it  may 
be  said,  considering  the  great  number  of  authors  who  have 
been  inspired  by  his  thoughts,  that  he  is  the  head  of  a  school 
of  educators. 

175.  How   FENELON   BECAME   A   TEACHER.  —  It   is   well 
known  that  the  valuable  treatise,  On  the  Education  of  Girls, 
was  written  in  1680,  at  the  request  of  the  Duke  and  the 
Duchess  of  Beauvilliers.     These  noble  friends  of  F£nelon, 
besides  several  boys,  had  eight  girls  to  educate.     It  was  to 
assist,  by  his  advice,  in  the  education  of  this  little  family 
school,  that  Fe'nelon  wrote  his  book  which  was  not  designed 
at  first  for  the  public,  and  which  did  not  appear  till  1687. 
The  young  Abb6  who,  in  1680,  was  but  thirty  years  old,  had 
already  had  experience  in  educational  matters  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  Convent  of  the  New  Catholics  (1678).     This 
was  an  institution  whose  purpose  was  to  retain  young  Protes- 
tant converts  in  the  Catholic  faith,  or  even  to  call  them  there 
by  mild  force.     It  would  have  been  better,  we  confess,  for 
the  glory  of  F£nelon,  if  he  had  gained  his  experience  else- 
where than  in  that  mission  of  fanaticism,  where  he  was  the 
auxiliary  of  the   secular  arm,  the  accomplice  of  dragoons, 
and  where  was   prepared  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes.     We  would  have  preferred  that  the  Education  of 
Girls  had  not  been  planned  in  a  house  where  were  violently 
confined  girls  torn  from  their  mothers,  and  wives  stolen  from 
their  husbands.     But  if  the  first  source  of  Fe'nelon's  educa- 


166  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tional  inspiration  was  not  as  pure  as  one  could  wish,  at  least 
in  the  book  there  is  nothing  that  betrays  the  spirit  of  intoler- 
ance and  violence  with  which  the  author  was  associated. 
On  the  contrary,  The  Education  of  Girls  is  a  work  of  gentle- 
ness and  goodness,  of  a  complaisant  and  amiable  grace,  which 
is  pervaded  by  a  spirit  of  progress. 

F£nelon  soon  had  occasion  to  apply  the  principles  that  he 
had  set  forth  in  his  treatise.  August  16,  1G89,  he  was 
chosen  preceptor  of  the  Duke  of  Bourgogne,1  with  the  Duke 
of  Beauvilliers  for  governor,  and  the  Abbe  Fleury  for  sub- 
preceptor.  From  1689  to  1695,  he  directed  with  marvellous 
success  the  education  of  a  prince,  "  a  born  terror,"  as  Saint 
Simon  expressed  it,  but  who,  under  the  penetrating  influence 
of  his  master,  became  an  accomplished  man,  almost  a  saint. 
It  was  for  his  royal  pupil  that  he  composed,  one  after 
another,  a  large  number  of  educational  works,  such  as  the 
Collection  of  Fables,  the  Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  the  treatise 
on  The  Existence  of  God,  and  especially  the  Telemaclms,  one 
of  the  most  popular  works  in  French  literature. 

In  furnishing  occasion  for  the  exercise  of  his  educational 
activity,  events  served  Fenelon  according  to  his  wish.  AVe 
may  say  that  his  nature  predestinated  him  to  the  work  of 
education.  "With  his  tender  soul,  preserving  its  paternal 
instincts  even  in  his  celibate  condition,  with  his  admirable 
grace  of  spirit,  with  his  various  erudition  and  profound 
knowledge  of  antiquity,  with  his  competence  in  the  studies 
of  grammar  and  history,  attested  by  different  passages  in 
his  Letter  to  tlie  Academy;  finally,  with  his  temperate  dispo- 
sition and  his  inclinations  towards  liberalism  in  a  century  of 
absolute  monarchy,  he  was  made  to  become  one  of  the  guides, 
one  of  the  masters,  of  French  education. 

i  Son  of  Louis  XIV.,  born  Aug.  6,  1682;  died  Feb.  18, 1712. 


FENELON.  167 

176.  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  TREATISE  ON  THE  EDUCATION  OP 
GIRLS.  —  This  charming  masterpiece  of  Fe'uelon's  should  be 
read  entire.     A  rapid  analysis  would  not  suffice,  as  it  is 
difficult   to   reduce   to  a   few  essential   points   the   flowing 
thought  of  our  author.     With  a  facility  in  expression  inclin- 
ing to  laxness,  and  with  a  copiousness  of  thought  somewhat 
lacking   in   exactness,   F6nelon  easily  repeats   himself ;    he 
returns  to  thoughts  which  have  already  been  elaborated,  and 
does  not  restrict  his  easy  flowing  thought  to  a  rigorous  and 
methodical  plan.     We  may,  however,  distinguish  three  prin- 
cipal  parts  in  the  thirteen  chapters  composing  the  work. 
Chapters  I.  and  II.  are  critical,  and  in  these  the  ordinary 
faults  in  the  education  of  women  are  brought  into  sharp  out- 
line ;    then    in    chapters    III.    to   VIII.    we    have    general 
observations,    and    the    statement    of    the    principles    and 
methods  that  should  be  followed  and  applied  in  the  education 
of  boys  as  in  the  education  of  girls  ;  and  finally,  from  chap- 
ter IX.  to  the  end  of  the  book,  are  all  the  special  reflections 
which   relate   exclusively  to  the  merits  and   demerits,  the 
duties  and  the  studies,  of  women. 

177.  CRITICISM  ON  MONASTIC  EDUCATION. — In  the  open- 
ing of  the  treatise,  as  in  another  little  essay  !  that  is  usually 
included  in  this  volume,  Fenelon  expresses  a  preference  for 
a  liberal  and  humane  education,  where  the  light  of  the  world 
penetrates,  and  which  is  not  confined  to  the  shadow  of  a 
monastery  :  — 

"  I  conclude  that  it  is  better  for  your  daughter  to  be  with 
you  than  in  the  best  convent  that  you  could  select.  ...  If 
a  convent  is  not  well  governed,  she  will  see  vanity  honored, 
which  is  the  most  subtile  of  all  the  poisons  that  can  affect  a 

1  See  the  Advice  of  Fe'nelon,  Archbishop  Cambray,  to  a  lady  of  quality 
on  the  education  of  her  daughter. 


168  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

young  girl.  She  will  there  hear  the  world  spoken  of  as  a 
sort  of  enchanted  place,  and  nothing  makes  a  more  perni- 
cious impression  than  that  deceptive  picture  of  the  Avorld, 
which  is  seen  at  a  distance  with  admiration,  and  which 
exaggerates  all  its  pleasures  without  showing  its  disappoint- 
ments and  its  sorrows.  ...  So  I  would  fear  a  worldly  con- 
vent even  more  than  the  world  itself.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
a  convent  conforms  to  the  fervor  and  regularity  of  its 
constitution,  a  girl  of  rank  will  grow  up  there  in  a  pro- 
found ignorance  of  the  world.  .  .  .  She  leaves  the  convent 
like  one  who  had  been  confined  in  the  shadows  of  a  deep 
cavern,  and  who  suddenly  returns  to  the  full  light  of  day. 
Nothing  is  more  dazzling  than  this  sudden  transition,  than 
this  glare  to  which  one  has  never  been  accustomed." 

178.  REFUTATION  OF  THE  PREJUDICES  RELATIVE  TO  THE 
EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN.  — It  is,  then,  for  mothers  that  Fene- 
lon  writes  his  book,  still  more  than  for  the  convents  that  he 
does  not  love.  Woman  is  destined  to  play  a  grand  part  in 
domestic  life.  "  Can  men  hope  for  any  sweetness  in  life,  if 
their  most  select  companionship,  which  is  that  of  marriage, 
is  turned  into  bitterness  ? "  Then  let  us  cease  to  neglect  the 
education  of  women,  and  renounce  the  prejudices  by  which 
we  pretend  to  justify  this  neglect.  A  learned  woman,  it  is 
said,  is  vain  and  affected  !  But  it  is  not  proposed  that 
women  shall  engage  in  useless  studies  which  would  make 
ridiculous  pedants  of  them  ;  it  is  simply  a  question  of  teach- 
ing them  what  befits  their  position  in  the  household.  Woman, 
it  is  said  again,  ordinarily  has  a  weaker  intellect  than  man  ! 
But  this  is  the  best  of  reasons  why  it  is  necessary  to 
strengthen  her  intelligence.  Finally,  woman  should  be 
brought  up  in  ignorance  of  the  world  !  But,  replies  Fe"nelon, 
the  world  is  not  a  phantom  ;  "  it  is  the  aggregate  of  all  the 


FEISTELON.  169 

families";  and  women  have  duties  to  fulfill  in  it  which  are 
scarcely  less  important  than  those  of  men.  "Virtue  is  not 
less  for  women  than  for  men." 

179.  GOOD  OPINION  OF  HUMAN  NATURE.  — There  are  two 
categories  of  Christians  :  the  first  dwell  particularly  on  the 
original  fall ;  and  the  others  attach  themselves  by  preference 
to  the  doctrine  of  redemption.      For  the  first,  the  child  is 
deeply  tainted  with   sin ;     his    only  inclinations    are   those 
towards  evil ;  he  is  a  child  of  wrath,  who  must  be  severely 
punished.      For  the  others,  the  child,  redeemed  by  grace, 
"has  not  yet  a  fixed  tendency  towards  any  object";    his 
instincts  have  no  need  of  being  thwarted ;  all  they  need  is 
direction.     Fe"nelon  follows  this  last  mode  of  thinking,  which 
is  the  correct  one.     He  does  not  fear  self-love,  and  does  not 
interdict  deserved  praise.     He  counts  upon  the  spontaneity 
of  nature.     He  regrets  the  education  of  the  ancients,  who 
left  more  liberty  to  children.     Finally,  in  his  judgments  on 
human  nature,  he  is  influenced  by  a  cheerful  and  amiable 
optimism,  and  sometimes  by  an  excess  of  complacency  and 
approbation. 

180.  FEEBLENESS  OF  THE  CHILD.  — -But  if  Fenelon  believes 
in  the  innocence  of  the  child,  he  is  not  the  less  convinced  of 
its  feebleness.     Hence  the  measures  he  recommends  to  those 
who  have  in  charge  the  bringing   up   of   children:     "The 
most  important  thing  in  the   first   years  of   infancy  is   the 
management  of  the  child's  health.     Through  the  selection  of 
food  and  the  regime  of  a  simple  life,  the  body  should  be 
supplied  with  pure  blood.  .  .  .     Another  thing  of  great  im- 
portance is  to  allow  the  organs   to   strengthen   by  holding 
instruction  in  abeyance.  ..."     The  intellectual  weakness  of 
the  child  comes  for  the  most  part  from  his  inability  to  fix  his 
attention.     "  The  mind  of  the  child  is  like  a  lighted  taper  in 


170  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

a  place  exposed  to  the  wind,  whose  flame  is  ever  unsteady." 
Hence  the  urgent  necessity  of  not  pressing  children  beyond 
measure,  of  training  them  little  by  little  as  occasion  permits, 
"  of  serving  and  assisting  Nature,  without  urging  her." 

181.  INSTRUCTIVE  CURIOSITY;    OBJECT  LESSONS.  —  If  the 
inattention  of  the  child  is  a  great  obstacle  to  his  progress, 
his  natural  curiosity,  by  way  of  compensation,  is  a  potent 
auxiliary.     Fe"nelon  knows  the  aid  that  can  be  derived  from 
this  source,  and  we  shall  quote  entire  the  remarkable  passage 
in  which  he  indicates  the  means  of  calling  it  into  exercise 
through  familiar  lessons  which  are  already  real  lessons  on 
objects :  — 

"  Curiosity  in  children  is  a  natural  tendency  which  comes 
as  the  precursor  of  instruction.  Do  not  fail  to  take  advan- 
tage of  it.  For  example,  in  the  country  they  see  a  mill,  and 
they  wish  to  know  what  it  is.  They  should  be  shown  the 
manner  of  preparing  the  food  that  is  needed  for  human  use. 
They  notice  harvesters,  and  what  they  are  doing  should  be 
explained  to  them ;  also,  how  the  wheat  is  sown,  and  how  it 
multiplies  in  the  earth.  In  the  city,  they  see  shops  where 
different  arts  are  practised,  and  where  different  wares  are 
sold.  You  should  never  be  annoyed  by  their  questions  ; 
these  are  so  many  opportunities  offered  you  by  nature  for 
facilitating  the  work  of  instruction.  Show  that  you  take 
pleasure  in  replying  to  such  questions,  and  by  this  means 
you  will  insensibly  teach  them  how  all  the  things  are  made 
that  serve  human  needs,  and  that  give  rise  to  commercial 
pursuits." 

182.  INDIRECT  INSTRUCTION. — Even  when  the   child   has 
grown  up,  and  is  more  capable  of  receiving  direct  instruc- 
tion, F6nelon  does  not  depart  from  his  system  of  mild  man- 
agement and  precaution.    There  are  to  be  no  didactic  lessons, 


FENELON.  171 

but  as  far  as  possible  the  instruction  shall  be  indirect.  This 
is  the  great  educational  method  of  F6nelon,  and  we  shall 
soon  see  how  he  applied  it  to  the  education  of  the  Duke  of 
Bourgogue.  "The  less  formal  our  lessons  are,  the  better." 
However,  there  is  need  of  discretion  and  prudence  in  the 
choice  of  the  first  ideas,  and  the  first  pictures  that  are  to  be 
impressed  on  the  child's  mind. 

"  Into  a  reservoir  so  little  and  so  precious  only  exquisite 
things  should  be  poured."  The  absence  of  pedantry  is  one 
of  the  characteristics  of  Fenelon.  "  In  rhetoric,"  he  says, 
"I  will  give  no  rules  at  all;  it  is  sufficient  to  give  good 
models."  As  to  grammar,  "  I  will  give  it  no  attention,  or, 
at  least,  but  very  little."  Instruction  must  be  insinuated, 
not  imposed.  We  must  resort  to  unexpected  lessons,  —  to 
such  as  do  not  appear  to  be  lessons.  Fenelon  here  antici- 
pates Rousseau,  and  suggests  the  system  of  pre-arranged 
scenes  and  instructive  artifices,  similar  to  those  invented  for 


183.  ALL  ACTIVITY  MUST  BE  PLEASURABLE.  —  One  of  the 
best  qualities  of  Fenelon  as  a  teacher  is  that  of  wishing  that 
study  should  be  agreeable  ;  but  this  quality  becomes  a  fault 
with  him,  because  he  makes  an  abuse  of  attractive  instruc- 
tion. We  can  but  applaud  him  when  he  criticises  the  harsh 
and  crabbed  pedagogy  of  the  Middle  Age,  and  depicts  to  us 
those  tiresome  and  gloomy  class-rooms,  where  teachers  are 
ever  talking  to  children  of  words  and  things  of  which  they 
understand  nothing.  "No  liberty,"  he  says,  "no  enjoy- 
ment. but  always  lessons,  silence,  uncomfortable  postures, 
correction,  and  threats."  And  so  there  is  nothing  more  just 
than  this  thought:  "  In  the  current  education,  all  the  pleas- 

1  For  an  example  of  this  "  artifice  "  carried  to  the  extreme  of  absurdity, 
see  jliss  Worthington's  translation  of  the  fimile,  p.  133.  (P.) 


172  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ure  is  put  on  one  side,  and  all  that  is  disagreeable  on  the 
other ;  the  disagreeable  is  all  put  into  study,  and  all  the 
pleasure  is  found  in  the  diversions."  F6nelon  would  change 
all  this.  For  study,  as  for  moral  discipline,  "  pleasure  must 
do  all." 

First,  as  to  study,  seek  the  means  of  making  agreeable  to 
children  whatever  you  require  of  them.  "We  must  always 
place  before  them  a  definite  and  agreeable  aim  to  sustain 
them  in  their  work."  "  Conceal  their  studies  under  the 
appearance  of  liberty  and  pleasure."  Let  their  range  of 
vision  extend  itself  a  little,  and  their  intelligence  acquire 
more  breadth."  k'  Mingle  instruction  with  play."  "  I  have 
seen,"  he  says  again,  "  certain  children  who  have  learned  to 
read  while  playing." 

For  giving  direction  to  the  will,  as  for  giving  activity  to 
the  intelligence,  never  subject  children  to  cold  and  absolute 
authority.  Do  not  weary  them  by  an  indiscreet  exactness. 
Let  wisdom  appear  to  them  only  at  intervals,  and  then  with 
a  laughing  face.  Lead  them  by  reason  whenever  it  is  pos- 
sible for  you  to  do  it.  Never  assume,  save  in  case  of  ex- 
treme necessity,  an  austere,  imperious  air  that  makes  them 
tremble. 

"  You  would  close  their  heart  and  destroy  their  confidence, 
without  which  there  is  no  profit  to  hope  for  from  education. 
Make  yourself  loved  by  them.  Let  them  feel  at  ease  in 
your  presence,  so  that  they  do  not  fear  to  have  you  see  their 
faults." 

Such,  intellectually  and  morally,  is  the  amiable  discipline 
dreamed  of  by  F£nelon.  It  is  evident  that  the  imagination 
of  our  author  conducts  him  a  little  too  far  and  leads  him 
astray.  F£nelon  sees  everything  on  the  bright  side.  In 
education,  such  as  this  too  complacent  teacher  dreams  of  it, 
there  is  no  difficulty,  nothing  laborious,  no  thorns.  "  All 


FENELON.  173 

metals  there  are  gold  ;  all  flowers  there  are  roses."  The 
child  is  almost  exempted  from  making  effort :  he  shall  not 
be  made  to  repeat  the  lesson  he  has  heard,  "  for  fear  of  an- 
noying him."  It  is  necessary  that  he  learn  everything  while 
playing.  If  he  has  faults,  he  must  not  be  told  of  them,  save 
with  precaution,  "  for  fear  of  hurting  his  feelings."  Fe"nelon 
is  decidedly  too  good-natured,  too  much  given  to  cajolery. 
In  his  effort  to  shun  whatever  is  repulsive,  he  comes  to  ex- 
clude whatever  is  laborious.  He  falls  into  an  artless  pleasantry 
when  he  demands  that  the  books  of  his  pupil  shall  be 
'•  beautifully  bound,  with  gilt  edges,  and  fine  pictures." 

184.  FABLES    AND     HISTORY.  —  Fe"nelon's    very    decided 
taste  for  agreeable  studies,  determines  him  to  place  in  the 
foremost  rank  of  the  child's  intellectual  occupations,  fables 
and  history,  because  narratives  please  the  infant  imagination 
above  everything  else.     It  is  with  sacred  history  especially 
that  he  would  have  the  attention  occupied,  always  selecting 
from  it  "  that  which   presents  the  most  pleasing  and   the 
most  magnificent  pictures."     He  properly  demands,  more- 
over, that  the  teacher  "animate  his  narrative  with  lively  and 
familiar  tones,  and  so  make  all  his  characters  speak."     By 
this  means  we  shall  hold  the  attention  of  children  without 
forcing  it;  "for,  once  more,"  he  says,  "we  must  be  very 
careful  not  to  impose  on  them  a  law  to  hear  and  to  remember 
these  narratives." 

185.  MORAL   AND    RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION.  —  Contrary  to 
Rousseau's   notions,  Fenelon  requires  that  children   should 
early  have    their  attention   turned   to   moral   and   religious 
truths.     He  would  have  this  instruction  given  in  the  con- 
crete, by  means  of  examples  drawn  from  experience.     We 
need  not  fear  to  speak  to  them  of   God  as  a  venerable  old 
man,  with  white  beard,  etc.     Whatever  of  the  superstitious 


174  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

there  may  be  in  these  conceptions  adapted  to  the  infant 
imagination  will  be  corrected  afterwards  by  the  reason. 
It  is  to  be  noted,  moreover,  that  a  religion  of  extremes  is 
not  what  Fe"nelon  desires.  He  fears  all  exaggerations,  even 
that  of  piety.  What  he  demands  is  a  tempered  devotion,  a 
reasonable  Christianity.  He  is  suspicious  of  false  miracles. 
"Accustom  girls,"  he  says,  "not  to  accept  thoughtlessly 
certain  unauthorized  narrations,  and  not  to  practise  certain 
forms  of  devotion  introduced  by  an  indiscreet  zeal."  But 
possibly,  without  intending  it,  Fe"nelon  himself  is  preparing 
the  way  for  the  superstition  he  combats,  when,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  indoctrinating  the  child  with  the  first  principles  of 
religion,  he  presents  to  him  the  notion  of  God  under  sensi- 
ble forms,  and  speaks  to  him  of  a  paradise  where  all  is  of 
gold  and  precious  stones. 

186.  STUDIES  PROPER  FOR  WOMEN.  —  So  far,  we  have  noted 
in  F6nelon's  work  only  general  precepts  applicable  to  boys 
and  girls  alike.  But  in  the  last  part  of  his  work,  F£nelon 
treats  especially  of  women's  own  work,  of  the  qualities  pecu- 
liarly their  own,  of  their  duties,  and  of  the  kind  of  instruction 
they  need  in  order  to  fulfill  them. 

No  one  knew  better  than  F£nelon  the  faults  that  come  to 
woman  through  ignorance,  —  unrest,  unemployed  time,  in- 
ability to  apply  herself  to  solid  and  serious  duties,  frivolity, 
indolence,  lawless  imagination,  indiscreet  curiosity  concern- 
ing trifles,  levity,  and  talkativeness,  sentimentalism,  and, 
what  is  remarkable  with  a  friend  of  Madame  Guyon,  a  mania 
for  theology:  "Women  are  too  much  inclined  to  speak 
decisively  on  religious  questions." 

What  does  Fe'nelon  propose  as  a  corrective  of  these 
mischievous  tendencies?  It  must  be  confessed  that  the  plan 
of  instruction  which  he  proposes  is  still  insufficient,  and  that 
it  scarcely  accords  with  the  ideal  as  we  conceive  it  to-day. 


FENELON.  175 

"  Keep  young  girls,"  he  says,  "  within  the  common 
bounds,  and  teach  them  that  there  should  be  for  their  sex  a 
modesty  with  respect  to  knowledge  almost  as  delicate  as  that 
inspired  by  the  horror  of  vice." 

Is  not  this  the  same  .as  declaring  that  knowledge  is  not 
ir.tended  for  women,  and  that  it  is  repugnant  to  their  deli- 
cate nature? 

When  Fenelon  tells  us  that  a  young  girl  ought  to  learn  to 
read  and  write  correctly  (and  observe  that  account  is  taken 
only  of  the  daughters  of  the  nobility  and  of  the  wealthy 
middle  classes)  ;  when  he  adds,  let  her  also  learn  grammar, 
we  can  infer  from  these  puerile  prescriptions,  that  Fenelon 
does  not  exact  any  great  things  from  women  in  the  way  of 
knowledge.  And  yet,  such  as  it  is,  this  programme  sur- 
passed, in  the  time  of  Fenelon,  the  received  custom,  and 
constituted  a  substantial  progress.  It  was  to  state  an  excel- 
lent principle,  whose  consequences  should  have  been  more 
fully  analyzed,  to  demand  that  women  should  learn  all  that  is 
necessary  for  them  to  know,  in  order  to  bring  up  their 
children.  Fe'nelon  should  also  be  commended  for  having 
recommended  to  young  women  the  reading  of  profane 
authors.  He  who  had  been  nourished  on  such  literature,  who 
was,  so  to  speak,  but  a  Greek  turned  Christian,  who  knew 
Homer  so  perfectly  as  to  write  the  Telemachus,  could  not, 
without  belying  himself,  advise  against  the  studies  from 
which  he  had  derived  so  much  pleasure  and  profit.  He  also 
recognized  the  utility  of  history,  ancient  and  modern.  He 
grants  a  place  to  poetry  and  eloquence,  provided  an  elimina- 
tion be  made  of  whatever  would  be  dangerous  to  purity  of 
morals.  What  we  comprehend  less  easily  is  that  he  con- 
demns, as  severely  as  he  does,  music,  which,  he  says,  "  fur- 
nishes diversions  that  are  poisonous." 

But  these  faults,  this  mistrust  of  too  high  an  intellectual 


176  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

culture,  ought  not  to  prevent  us  from  admiring  the  Education 
of  Girls.  Let  us  be  grateful  to  Fe'nelon  for  having  resisted, 
in  part,  the  prejudices  of  a  period  when  young  women  were 
condemned  by  their  sex  to  an  almost  absolute  ignorance  ;  for 
having  declared  that  he  would  follow  a  course  contrary  "  to 
that  of  alarm  and  of  a  superficial  culture  of  the  intelligence  "  ; 
and  finally,  for  having  written  a  book,  all  the  generous  in- 
spirations of  which  Madame  de  Maintenon  herself  has  not 
caught ;  and  of  which  we  may  say,  finally,  that  almost  every- 
thing that  it  contains  is  excellent,  and  that  it  is  defective 
only  in  what  it  does  not  contain. 

187.  MADAME  DE  LAMBERT  (1647-1733).  —  Fe'nelon,  as 
an  educator  of  women,  was  the  founder  of  a  schoolt  From 
Rollin  to  Madame  de  Genlis,  how  many  teachers  have  been 
inspired  by  him !  But  in  the  front  rank  of  his  pupils  we 
must  place  Madame  de  Lambert.  In  her  Counsels  to  her  Son 
( 1 701) ,  and  especially  in  her  Counsels  to  her  Daughter  ( 1 728), 
she  has  taken  up  the  tradition  of  F£nelon  with  greater 
breadth  and  freedom  of  spirit.  "  As  discreet  as  he  with 
respect  to  works  of  the  imagination,  of  which  she  fears  that 
the  reading  may  inflame  the  mind  ; "  more  severe,  even,  than 
he  towards  Racine,  whose  name  she  seems  to  hesitate  to 
pronounce  ;  disposed  to  exclude  her  daughter  from  "  plays. 
representations  that  move  the  passions,  music,  poetry,  —  all 
belonging  to  the  retinue  of  pleasure,  —  in  other  respects, 
Madame  de  Lambert  takes  precedence  and  surpasses  her 
master"  (Gre'ard).  She  reproaches  Moliere  for  having 
abandoned  women  to  idleness,  pastime,  and  pleasure.  She 
loves  history,  especially  the  history  of  France,  "  which  no 
one  is  permitted  not  to  know."  Finally,  without  entering 
into  the  details  of  her  protests,  she  makes  a  powerful  plea  for 
the  cause  of  woman's  education  ;  she  already  belongs  to  the 
eighteenth  century. 


FENELON.  177 

188.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  BOURGOGKE.  —  Singu- 
larly enough,  Fe"nelon  did  not  make  an  application  of  his 
ideas   on   education   till   after  he  had  set  them  forth  in  a 
theoretical  treatise.     The  education  of  the  Duke  of  Bour- 
gogne  permitted  him  to  make  a  practical  test  of  the  rules 
established  in  the  Education  of  Girls.     Nothing  is  of  more 
interest  to  the  historian  of  pedagogy  than  the  study  of  that 
princely  education  into  which  F6nelon  put  all  his  mind  and 
heart,  and  which,  by  its  results,  at  once  brilliant  and  insuffi- 
cient, exhibits   the  merits  and  the   faults   of   his   plan  of 
education. 

189.  HAPPY  RESULTS.  — The  Duke  of  Bourgogne  with  his 
active   intelligence,  and   also  with  his   impetuous,   indocile 
character,  and  his  fits  of  passion,  was  just  the  pupil  for  the 
teacher  who  relied  on  indirect  instruction.     It  would  have 
been  unwise  to  indoctrinate  with  heavy  didactic  lessons  a 
spirit  so  impetuous.     Through  tact  and  industry,  F6nelon 
succeeded  in  captivating  the  attention  of  the  prince,  and  in 
skillfully  insinuating  into  his  mind  knowledges  that  he  would 
probably  have  rejected,  had  they  been  presented  to  it  in  a 
scientific  and  pedantic  form.     "  I  have  never  seen  a  child," 
says  Fe"nelon,  "  who  so  readily  understood  the  finest  things 
of  poetry  and  eloquence."    Doubtless  the  happy  nature  of  the 
prince  contributed  a  large  part  towards  these  results  ;  but 
the  art  of  Fenelon  had  also  its  share  in  the  final  account. 

190.  MORAL  LESSONS;  THE  FABLES. — How  shall  morals 
be  taught  to  a  violent  and  passionate  child?     Fenelon  did 
not  think  of  preaching  fine  sermons  to  him  ;  but  presented 
to  him,  under  the  form  of  Fables,  the  moral  precepts  that  he 
wished  to  inculcate.     The  Fables  of  F6nelon  certainly  have 
not,  as  a  whole,  a  large  literary  value  ;  but,  to  form  a  just 
appreciation  of  them,  we  must  recollect  that  their  merit  is 


178  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

especially  to  be  seen  in  the  circumstances  attending  their 
composition.  Composed  from  day  to  day,  they  were  adapted 
to  the  circumstances  of  the  life  of  the  young  prince  ;  they 
were  filled  with  allusions  to  his  faults  and  his  virtues,  and 
they  conveyed  to  him,  at  the  favorable  moment,  under  the  veil 
of  a  pleasing  fiction,  the  commendation  or  the  censure  that  he 
deserved.  "One  might,"  says  the  Cardinal  de  Bausset, 
"  follow  the  chronological  order  in  which  these  pieces  were 
composed,  b}*  comparing  them  with  the  progress  which  age 
and  instruction  must  have  made  in  the  education  of  the 
prince."  The  apologues,  even  with  their  very  general  morals, 
will  always  have  their  value  and  place  in  the  education  of 
children.  What  shall  be  said  of  the  fables  in  which  the 
moral,  wholly  individual,  was  addressed  exclusively  to  the 
pupil  for  whom  they  were  written,  either  on  account  of  some 
perversity  that  he  let  come  to  the  surface,  or  of  a  rising  virtue 
that  had  been  manifested  in  his  conduct?  It  is  thus  that  the 
fable  called  Tlie  Capricious  presented  to  the  young  duke  the 
picture  of  his  fits  of  passion,  and  taught  him  to  correct  him- 
self ;  that  of  the  Bee  and  the  Fly  reminded  him  that  the 
most  brilliant  qualities  serve  no  good  purpose  without  mod- 
eration. One  day,  in  a  fit  of  anger,  the  prince  so  far  forgot 
himself  as  to  sa}-  to  Fenelon,  who  was  reproving  him :  '•  Xo. 
no,  Sir!  I  know  who  I  am,  and  who  you  are!"  The  next 
day,  doubtless  in  response  to  this  explosion  of  princely  self- 
conceit,  Fenelon  had  him  read  the  fable  entitled  Bacchns 
and  the  Faun:  "As  Bacchus  could  not  abide  a  malicious 
jeerer  always  ready  to  make  sport  of  his  expressions  thr.t 
were  not  correct  and  elegant,  he  said  to  him  in  a  fiery  and 
important  tone:  "  How  dare  you  jeer  the  son  of  Jupiter?" 
The  Faun  replied  without  emotion:  "Alas!  how  does  the 
son  of  Jupiter  dare  to  commit  any  fault  ?  " 

Certain  fables,  of  a  more  elevated  tone  than  the  others, 


FENELON.  179 

are  not  designed  simply  to  correct  the  faults  of  children ; 
they  prepare  the  prince  for  the  exercise  of  government. 
Thus,  the  fable  of  the  Bees  disclosed  to  him  the  beauties  of 
an  industrious  State,  and  one  where  order  reigns ;  the  Nile 
and  the  Ganges  taught  him  love  for  the  people,  "  compassion 
for  humanity,  harassed  and  suffering."  Finally,  from  each 
of  these  fables  there  issued  a  serious  lesson  under  the  pleas- 
ing exterior  of  a  witticism ;  and  more  than  once,  in  reading 
them,  the  prince  doubtless  felt  an  emotion  of  pleasure  or  of 
shame,  as  he  recognized  himself  in  a  commendation  or  in.  a 
reproof  addressed  to  the  imaginary  personages  of  the  Fables. 

191.  HISTORICAL  LESSONS  ;  THE  DIALOGUES  OP  THE  DEAD. — 
It  is  not  alone  in  moral  education,  but  in  intellectual  educa- 
tion as  well,  that  Fe'nelon  resorts  to  artifice.  The  ingenious 
preceptor  has  employed  fiction  in  all  its  forms  the  better  to 
compass  and  dominate  the  spirit  of  his  pupil.  There  are  the 
fables  for  moral  instruction,  the  dialogues  for  the  study  of 
history,  and  finally,  the  epopee  in  the  Telemachus,  for  the 
political  education  of  the  heir  to  the  throne  of  France. 

The  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  put  on  the  stage  men  of  all 
countries  and  conditions,  Charles  the  Fifth  and  a  monk  of 
Saint  Just,  Aristotle  and  Descartes,  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and 
Poussin,  Caesar  and  Alexander.  History  proper,  literature, 
philosophy,  the  arts,  were  the  subjects  of  conversations  com- 
posed, as  in  the  Fables,  at  different  intervals,  according  to 
the  progress  and  the  needs  of  the  Duke  of  Bourgogne. 
These  were  attractive  pictures  that  came  from  time  to  time 
to  be  introduced  into  the  scheme  for  the  didactic  study  of 
universal  history.  They  should  be  taken  only  for  what  they 
were  intended  to  be,  —  the  pleasing  complement  to  a  regular 
and  consecutive  course  of  instruction.  Fenelon  knew  better 
than  any  one  else  that  history  is  interesting  in  itself,  and 


180  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

that  to  make  the  stuch'  of  it  interesting,  it  is  sufficient  to  pre- 
sent it  to  the  childish  imagination  with  clearness,  with  vivac- 
ity, and  with  feeling. 

192.  VARIETY  OF  DISCIPLINARY  AGENTS. — The  education 
of  the  Duke  of  Bourgogne  is  the  practical  application  of 
Fe'nelon's  principles  as  to  the  necessity  of  employing  an 
insinuating  gentleness  rather  than  an  authority  which  dryly 
commands.  There  are  to  be  no  sermons,  no  lectures,  but 
indirect  means  of  moral  instruction.  The  Duke  of  Bourgrogne 

O     O 

was  irascible.  Instead  of  reading  to  him  Seneca's  treatise 
On  Anger,  this  is  Fenelon's  device  :  One  morning  he  has 
a  cabinet-maker  come  to  his  apartments,  whom  he  has  in- 
structed for  the  purpose.  The  prince  enters,  stops,  and 
looks  at  the  tools.  "  Go  about  your  business,  Sir,"  cries 
the  workman,  who  assumes  a  most  threatening  air,  "for  I 
am  not  responsible  for  what  I  may  do ;  when  I  am  in  a  pas- 
sion, I  break  the  arms  and  legs  of  those  whom  I  meet."  We 
guess  the  conclusion  of  the  story,  and  how,  by.  this  experi- 
mental method,  F£nelon  contrives  to  teach  the  prince  to 
guard  against  anger  and  its  effects. 

When  indirect  means  did  not  answer,  F£nelon  emploj'ed 
others.  It  is  thus  that  he  made  frequent  appeals  to  the  self- 
love  of  his  pupil ;  he  reminded  him  of  what  he  owed  to  his 
name  and  to  the  hopes  of  France.  He  had  him  record  his 
word  of  honor  that  he  would  behave  well :  "I  promise  the 
Abbe"  Fe'nelon,  on  the  word  of  a  prince,  that  I  will  obey 
him,  and  that,  in  case  I  break  my  word,  I  will  submit  to  any 
kind  of  punishment  and  dishonor.  Given  at  Versailles,  this 
29th  day  of  November,  1689.  Signed:  Louis."  At  other 
times  F£nelon  appealed  to  his  feelings,  and  conquered  him 
by  his  tenderness  and  goodness.  It  is  in  such  moments  of 
tender  confidence  that  the  prince  said  to  him,  "I  leave  the 


FENELON.  181 

Duke  of  Bourgogne  outside  the  door,  and  with  you  I  am  but 
the  little  Louis."  Finally,  at  other  times,  F^nelon  resorted 
to  the  harshest  punishments ;  he  sequestered  him,  took  away 
his  books,  and  interdicted  all  conversation. 

1(J3.  DIVERSIFIED  INSTRUCTION.  —  By  turns  serious  and 
tender,  mild  and  severe,  in  his  moral  discipline,  F6nelon  was 
not  less  versatile  in  his  methods  of  instruction.  His  domi- 
nant preoccupation  was  to  diversify  studies  —  the  term  is 
his  own.  If  a  given  subject  of  study  was  distasteful  to  his 
pupil,  F^nelon  passed  to  another.  Although  the  success  of 
his  tutorship  seems  to  be  a  justification  of  his  course,  there 
is  ground  for  thinking  that,  as  a  general  rule,  F£nelon's 
precept  is  debatable,  and  that  his  example  should  not  be  fol- 
lowed by  making  an  over-use  of  amusement  and  agreeable 
variety.  F6nelon  has  too  often  made  studies  puerile  through 
his  attempts  to  make  them  agreeable. 

l'J4.  RESULTS  OK  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  BOUR- 
GOGNE. —  It  seems  like  a  paradox  to  say  that  F6nelou  was 
too  successful  in  his  educational  apostleship  ;  and  yet  this  is 
the  truth.  Under  his  hand  —  "the  ablest  hand  that  ever 
was,"  says  Saint  Simon  —  the  prince  became  in  all  respects 
the  image  of  his  master.  He  was  a  bigot  to  the  extent  of 
being  unwilling  to  attend  a  royal  ball  because  that  worldly 
entertainment  coincided  with  the  religious  celebration  of  the 
Epiphany  ;  he  was  rather  a  monk  than  a  king ;  he  was  desti- 
tute of  all  spirit  of  initiative  and  liberty,  irresolute,  absorbed 
in  his  pious  erudition  and  mystic  prayers ;  finally,  he  was 
another  Telemachus,  who  could  not  do  without  his  Mentor. 
F6nelon  had  monopolized  and  absorbed  the  will  of  his  pupil. 
He  had  forgotten  that  the  purpose  of  education  is  to  form, 
not  a  pale  copy,  an  image  of  the  master,  but  a  man  inde- 
pendent and  free,  capable  of  sufficing  for  himself. 


182  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

195.  THE    TELEMACHUS. — The     Telemachusy    composed 
from  1694  to  1698,  was  designed  for  the  Duke  of  Bour- 
gogne ;  but  he  was  not  to  read  it,  and  did  not  read  it,  in 
fact,  till  after  his  marriage.     Through  this  epopee  in  prose, 
this  romance  borrowed  from  Homer,  Fenelon  purposed  to 
continue  the  moral  education  of  his  pupil.     But  the  book 
abounds  in  sermons.     "  I  could  have  wished,"  said  Boileau, 
"  that  the  Abb6  had  made  his  Mentor  a  little  less  a  preacher, 
and  that  the  moral  of  the  book  could  have  been  distributed 
a  little  more  imperceptibly,  and  with  more  art."     At  least, 
they  are  beautiful  and  excellent  sermons,  aimed  against  lux- 
ury, the  spirit  of   conquest,  the  consequences  of  absolute 
power,  and  against   ambition   and  war.     Louis   XIV.   had 
probably  read  the  Telemachus,  and  had  comprehended  the 
allusions  concealed  in  the  description  of   the  Republic  of 
Salentum,  when  he  said  of  Fenelon  that  he  was  "•  the  most 
chimerical  spirit  in  his  kingdom."     Besides  the  moral  lesson 
intended   for   princes,   the    Telemachus   also   contains   bold 
reflections  on   political  questions.     For  example,  note   the 
conception  of  a  system  of  public  instruction,  very  new  for 
the  time  :  "  Children  belong  less  to  their  parents  than  to  the 
Republic,  and  ought  to  be  educated  by  the  State.     There 
should  be  established  public  schools  in  which  are  taught  the 
fear  of  God,  love  of  country,  and  respect  for  the  laws." 

196.  BOSSUET  AND   FENELON.  —  Bossuet,  as  preceptor  of 
the  Dauphin,1  was  far  from  having  the  same   success  as 
Fenelon.     Nothing  was  overlooked,  however,  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  son  of   Louis  XIV.  ;    and   the   Letter  to   Pope 
Innocent  XI.  (1679),  in  which  Bossuet  presents  his  scheme 
of  study,  gives  proof  of  high  fitness  for  educational  work. 

i  Eldest  son  of  Louis  XIV.,  born  Nov.  1,  1661;  died  April  14, 1711. 


FENELON.  183 

He  recommends  assiduous  labor,  no  leaves  of  absence, 
and  play  mingled  with  study.  "A  child  must  play  and 
enjoy  himself,"  he  says.  Emulation  excited  by  the  presence 
of  other  children,  who  came  to  compete  with  the  prince  ;  a 
thorough  reading  of  the  Latin  authors,  explained,  not  in 
fragments,  as  with  the  Jesuits,  but  in  complete  texts ;  a  cer- 
tain breadth  of  spirit,  since  the  study  of  the  comic  poets  — 
of  Terence  in  particular  —  was  expressly  recommended ;  a 
familiarity  with  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  "especially 
with  the  divine  Homer "  ;  the  grammar  learned  in  French  ; 
history,  "the  mistress  of  human  life,"  studied  with  ardor, 
and  presented,  first,  in  its  particular  facts,  in  the  lessons 
which  the  Dauphin  drew  up,  and  then  in  its  general  laws, 
the  spirit  of  which  has  been  transmitted  to  us  in  the  Dis- 
course on  Universal  History;  geography  learned  "  while 
playing  and  making  imaginary  journeys  "  ;  philosophy  ;  and 
finally  the  sciences,  brilliantly  presented,  —  with  such  a  pro- 
gramme, and  under  such  a  master,  it  seems  that  the  Dauphin 
ought  to  have  been  a  student  of  the  highest  rank ;  but  he 
remained  a  mediocre  pupil,  "absorbed,"  to  use  Saint 
Simon's  expression,  "  in  his  own  fat  and  gloom." 

It  must  certainly  be  acknowledged  that,  notwithstanding 
his  excellent  intentions,  Bossuet  was  in  part  responsible  for 
the  fact  that  these  results  were  insufficient,  or,  rather,  nil. 
He  did  not  know  how  "  to  condescend,"  as  Montaigne  says, 
"  to  the  boyish  ways  of  his  pupil."  In  dealing  with  him  he 
proceeded  on  too  high  a  plane.  "The  austere  genius  of 
Bossuet,"  says  Henry  Martin,  "did  not  know  how  to  be- 
come small  with  the  small."  Bossuet  lacked  in  flexibility 
and  tact,  precisely  the  qualities  that  characterized  Fe"nelon. 
Bossuet,  in  education,  as  in  everything  else,  is  grandeur, 
noble  and  sublime  bearing  ;  F^uolon,  as  preceptor,  is  ad- 
dress, insinuating  grace.  That  which  dominates  in  the  one 


184  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

is  authority,  a  majesty  almost  icy ;  that  which  constitutes 
the  charm  of  the  other  is  versatility,  a  persuasive  gentleness, 
a  penetrating  tenderness. 

To  be  just,  however,  it  must  be  added  that  the  faults  were 
not  all  on  Bossuet's  side.  In  that  education,  stamped  witli 
failure,  the  pupil  was  the  great  culprit,  with  his  ungrateful 
and  rebellious  nature.  "  My  lord  has  much  spirit,"  said  a 
courtier,  "  but  he  has  it  concealed"  For  one  not  a  courtier, 
does  it  not  amount  to  the  same  thing  to  have  one's  spirit 
concealed  and  to  have  none  at  all? 

197.  SPHERE  AND  LIMITS  OF  EDUCATION.  —  It  seems  that, 
on  one  page  of  the  Education  of  Girls,  F6nelon  has  traced 
in  advance,  and  by  a  sort  of  divination,  the  parallels  of  the 
two  educations  of  the  Dauphin  and  of  the  Duke  of  Bour- 
gogne  respectively.  How  can  we  fail  to  recognize  the 
anticipated  portrait  of  F£nelon's  future  pupil  in  this  passage, 
written  in  1680? 

"It  must  be  acknowledged,  that  of  all  the  difficulties  in 
education,  none  is  comparable  to  that  of  bringing  up  chil- 
dren who  are  lacking  in  sensibility.  The  naturally  quick 
and  sensitive  are  capable  of  terrible  mistakes,  —  passion  and 
presumption  do  so  betray  them !  But  they  have  also  great 
resources,  and  when  far  gone  often  come  to  themselves.  In- 
struction is  a  germ  concealed  within  them,  which  starts,  and 
sometimes  bears  fruit,  when  experience  comes  to  the  aid  of 
knowledge,  and  the  passions  lose  their  power.  At  least, 
we  know  how  to  make  them  attentive,  and  to  awaken  their 
curiosity.  We  have  the  means  of  interesting  them,  and  of 
stimulating  them  through  their  sense  of  honor ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  can  gain  no  hold  on  indolent  natures." 

On  the  other  hand,  all  that  follows  applies  perfectly  to  the 
Dauphin,  the  indocile  pupil  of  Bossuet :  — 


FENELON.  185 

"...  All  the  thoughts  of  these  are  distractions  ;  they  are 
never  where  they  ought  to  be  ;  they  cannot  be  touched  to 
the  quick  even  by  corrections  ;  they  hear  everything  and  feel 
nothing.  This  indolence  makes  the  pupil  negligent,  and 
disgusts  him  with  whatever  he  does.  Under  these  conditions, 
the  best  planned  education  runs  the  risk  of  failure.  .  .  . 
Many  people,  who  think  superficially,  conclude  from  this 
poor  success  that  nature  does  all  for  the  production  of  men 
of  merit,  and  that  education  has  no  part  in  the  result ;  but 
the  only  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  the  case  is,  that  there 
are  natures  like  ungrateful  soils,  upon  which  culture  has  but 
little  effect."1 

Nothing  better  can  be  said,  and  Fe'nelon  has  admirably 
summed  up  the  lesson  that  should  be  drawn  from  these  two 
princely  illustrations  of  the  seventeenth  century.  If  the 
sorry  results  of  Bossuet's  efforts  should  inspire  the  educator 
with  some  modesty,  and  prove  to  him  that  the  best  grain 
does  not  grow  in  an  ingrate  soil,  is  not  the  brilliant  educa- 
tion of  the  Duke  of  Bourgogne,  which  developed  almost  all 
the  virtues  in  a  soul  where  nature  seemed  to  have  planted 
the  seeds  of  all  the  vices,  of  a  nature  to  increase  the  con- 
fidence of  teachers,  and  show  them  what  can  be  done  by  the 
art  of  a  shrewd  and  able  teacher? 

[198.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  Education  as  a  plastic 
art  has  never  been  exhibited  in  a  more  favorable  light  than 
in  this  history  of  Fe"nelon's  teaching ;  and  perhaps  the 
resistance  that  sometimes  sets  at  defiance  the  teacher's  art 
could  not  be  better  illustrated  than  in  the  case  of  Bossuet's 
royal  pupil. 

2.  These  two  historical  illustrations  also  exhibit  the  play 
of  the  two  factors  that  enter  into  education,  —  nature  and 

1  Education  of  Girls,  Chap.  v. 


186  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

art.  F£nelon's  teaching  illustrates  the  potency  of  human 
art  in  controlling,  modif3'ing,  almost  re-creating  a  work  of 
nature.  The  Duke  of  Bourgogue  was  almost  re-made  to 
order. 

3.  Here  is  also  an  illustrious  example  of  the  attempt  to 
make  education  a  pastime,  to  divest  it  of  all  constraint,  to 
make  learning  run  parallel  with  the  pupil's  inclinations.     In 
the  natural  recoil  from  a  dry  and  formal  teaching  that  had 
to  be  enforced  against  the  pupil's  will,  it  is  sometimes  for- 
gotten that  a  large  part  of  life's  duties  lie  outside  of  our 
inclinations. 

4.  The  policy  of  leading  pupils  at  such  a  distance  that 
they  seem  to  themselves  to  he  following  their  own  initiative, 
is  one  of  the  highest  of  the  teacher's  arts. 

5.  The  inculcation  of  moral  lessons  through  fables,  after 
Fe"nelon's  plan,  is  a  practice  that  modern  teaching  might 
profitably  adopt.] 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE    PHILOSOPHERS    OF    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 
DESCARTES,   MALEBRANCHE,   LOCKE. 

DESCARTES,  MALEBRANCHE,  LOCKE  ;  DESCARTES  (1596-1650) ;  THE  DIS- 
COURSE OP  METHOD  J  CRITICISM  OF  THE  CURRENT  EDUCATION  ; 
GREAT  PRINCIPLES  OF  MODERN  PEDAGOGY;  OBJECTIVE  AND  SUB- 
JECTIVE PEDAGOGY  J  MALEBRANCHE  (1638-1715)  J  SENSE  INSTRUCTION 
CONDEMNED;  INFLUENCE  OF  ENVIRONMENT;  LOCKE  (1632-1704);  THE 
THOUGHTS  CONCERNING  EDUCATION  ;  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION  J  THE 
HARDENING  PROCESS  ;  HYGIENIC  PARADOXES  J  MORAL  EDUCATION 
MORE  IMPORTANT  THAN  INSTRUCTION  ;  SENSE  OF  HONOR  THE 
PRINCIPLE  OF  MORAL  DISCIPLINE  J  CONDEMNATION  OF  CORPORAL 
PUNISHMENT;  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION;  UTILITARIAN  STUDIES; 
PROGRAMME  OF  STUDIES;  ATTRACTIVE  STUDIES;  SHOULD  A  TRADE 
BE  LEARNED?  WORKING  SCHOOLS;  LOCKE  AND  ROUSSEAU;  ANA- 
LYTICAL SUMMARY. 


199.  DESCARTES,  MALEBRANCHE,  AND  LOCKE. — Descartes, 
a  spiritualist ;  Malebranche,  an  idealist ;  Locke,  a  sensation- 
alist, —  such  are  the  philosophers  of  the  seventeenth  centur}7 
who  are  related  to  the  history  of  pedagogy.     And  yet  the 
first  two  have  only  a  remote  connection  with  it,  through  their 
exposition  of  some  of  its  general  principles.     Locke  is  the 
only  one  who  has  resolutely  approached  educational  ques- 
tions in  a  special  treatise  that  has  become  a  classic  in  Eng- 
lish pedagogy. 

200.  DESCARTES  (1596-1650).  —Descartes,  the  father  of 
modern   philosophy,   does  not  generally  figure  in   the  lists 
drawn  up  by  the  historians  of  education  ;    and  yet,  in  our 


188  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

opinion,  there  is  no  thinker  who  has  exercised  a  more  deci- 
sive influence  on  the  destinies  of  education.  The  author  of 
the  Discourse  of  Method  has,  properly  speaking,  no  system 
of  pedagogy,  having  never  directly  treated  of  educational 
affairs ;  but  through  his  philosophical  principles  he  has 
changed  the  direction  of  human  thought,  and  has  intro- 
duced into  the  study  of  known  truths,  as  well  as  into  the 
search  for  new  truths,  a  method  and  a  taste  for  clearness 
and  precision,  which  have  profited  instruction  in  all  of  its 
departments. 

"  We  now  find,"  says  Rollin,  "  in  the  discourses  from  the 
pulpit  and  the  bar,  and  in  the  dissertations  on  science,  an 
order,  an  exactness,  a  proprietj7,  and  a  solidity,  which  were 
formerly  not  so  common.  Many  believe,  and  not  without 
reason,  that  we  owe  this  manner  of  thinking  and  writing  to 
the  extraordinary  progress  which  has  been  made  within  a 
a  century  in  the  study  of  philosophy." l 

201.  THE  DISCOURSE  OP  METHOD  (1637). — Every  system 
of  philosophy  contains  in  germ  a  special  system  of  educa- 
tion. From  the  mere  fact  that  philosophers  define,  each  in 
his  own  way,  the  nature  and  the  destiny  of  man,  they  come 
to  different  conclusions  as  to  the  aims  and  methods  of  educa- 
tion. Only  a  few  of  them  have  taken  pains  to  deduce  from 
their  principles  the  consequences  that  are  involved  in  them  ; 
but  all  of  them,  whether  they  will  or  no,  are  educators. 

Such  is  the  case  of  Descartes.  In  writing,  in  the  first 
part  of  his  Discourse  of  Method,  his  Considerations  Towliimj 
the  Sciences,  Descartes  has  written  a  chapter  on  practical 
pedagogy,  and  through  the  general  rules  of  his  logic,  he 
has,  in  effect,  founded  a  new  theory  of  education. 

1  Rollin,  Traite  des  ttudts,  Tome  IV.  p.  335. 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      189 

202.  CRITICISM  OF  THE  CURRENT  EDUCATION. — Descartes 
has  given  a  long  account  of  the  education  which  he  had  re- 
ceived among  the  Jesuits,  at  the  college  of  La  F16che,  and 
this  account  furnished  him  occasion,  either  to  criticize  the 
methods  in  use,  or  to  indicate  his  personal  views  and  his 
educational  preferences. 

"  From  my  infancy  letters  have  been  my  intellectual 
nourishment.  .  .  .  But  as  soon  as  I  had  completed  the 
course  of  study  required  for  the  doctor's  degree,  I  found 
myself  embarrassed  with  so  many  doubts  and  errors  that  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  had  received  no  other  profit  from  my 
efforts  at  learning  than  the  discovery  of  my  growing  igno- 
rance." 

In  other  terms,  Descartes  ascertained  that  his  studies, 
though  pursued  with  ardor  for  eight  years  in  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  schools  of  Europe,  had  not  permitted  him 
to  acquire  "  a  clear  and  sure  knowledge  of  all  that  is  useful 
for  living."  This  was  to  condemn  the  barren  teaching  and 
the  formal  instruction  of  the  Jesuits.  Passing  in  review  the 
different  parts  of  the  instruction,  Descartes  first  remarks 
that  it  was  wrong  to  make  an  abuse  of  the  reading  of 

O  O 

ancient  books  ;  for,  to  hold  converse  with  the  men  of  other 
centuries  "  is  about  the  same  as  travelling  ;  and  when  we 
spend  to.o  much  time  in  travelling,  we  become  strangers  in 
our  own  country."  Then  he  complains  that  he  was  not 
made  to  know  "  the  true  use  of  mathematics,"  since  he  had 
been  shown  their  application  only  to  the  mechanic  arts.  He 
nearly  condemns  rhetoric  and  poetics,  since  eloquence  and 
poetry  are  "intellectual  gifts  rather  than  the  fruits  of  study." 
The  ancient  languages  —  and  in  this  he  gravely  deceives 
himself  —  seem  to  him  useful  only  for  the  understanding  of 
authors.  He  does  not  admit  that  the  study  of  Latin  or 
Greek  can  contribute  to  intellectual  development. 


190  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

From  these  reflections  there  seems  to  issue  the  notion  of 
an  instruction  more  solid,  more  positive,  more  directly  use- 
ful for  the  purposes  of  life,  than  that  which  had  been 
brought  into  fashion  by  the  Jesuits.  However,  Descartes 
does  not  eliminate  the  ordinary  studies,  as  eloquence, 
"which  has  incomparable  power  and  beauty";  poetry, 
"which  has  an  enchanting  tenderness  and  melody";  the 
reading  of  the  classics,  which  is  "  a  studied  conversation 
with  the  most  estimable  men  of  past  centuries  "  ;  history, 
"which  forms  the  judgment"  ;  fables,  whose  "charm  arouses 
the  spirit."  But  he  would  give  to  all  these  exercises  a  more 
practical  turn,  a  more  utilitarian  character,  a  more  positive 
application. 

203.  GREAT  PRINCIPLES  OF  MODERN  PEDAGOGY.  —  With- 
out intending  it,  without  any  other  thought  than  that  of 
modifying  the  false  direction  of  the  mind  in  the  search  for 
scientific  truth,  Descartes  has  stated  some  of  the  great  prin- 
ciples of  modern  pedagogy. 

The  first  is  the  equal  aptitude  of  minds  to  know  and  com- 
prehend. "Good  sense,"  says  Descartes,  "is  the  thing  of 
all  else  in  this  world  that  is  most  equally  distributed.1  .  .  . 
The  latent  ability  to  judge  well,  to  distinguish  the  true  from 
the  false,  is  natm-ally  equal  among  all  men."  What  is  this 
but  saying  that  all  men  are  entitled  to  instruction  ?  In  a  cer- 
tain sense,  what  are  the  innumerable  primary  schools  scattered 
over  the  surface  of  the  civilized  globe,  but  the  application 
and  the  living  commentary  of  Descartes'  ideas  on  the  equal 
distribution  of  good  sense  and  reason  among  men  ? 

1  I  am  in  doubt  whether  M.  Compayre  intends  to  sanction  this  doctrine 
or  not.  This  is  an  anticipation  of  one  of  Jacotot's  paradoxes:  "  All  human 
beings  are  equally  capable  of  learning."  The  verdict  of  actual  teachers 
is  undoubtedly  to  the  effect  that  there  are  manifold  differences  in  the 
ability  of  pupils  to  know,  comprehend,  and  judge.  (P.) 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      191 

But,  adds  Descartes,  "  it  is  not  enough  to  have  a  sound 
mind  ;  the  principal  thing  is  to  make  a  good  use  of  it."  In 
other  words,  nature  is  not  sufficient  in  herself;  she  needs  to 
be  guided  and  directed.  Method  is  the  essential  thing ;  it 
has  a  sovereign  importance.  Success  will  depend  less  on 
natural  qualities,  such  as  imagination,  memory,  quickness 
of  thought,  than  upon  the  rules  of  intellectual  direction 
imposed  on  the  mind.  Education  has  a  far  greater  part 
than  nature  in  the  formation  and  development  of  accurate 
and  upright  intelligences. 

Another  Cartesian  principle  is  the  substitution  of  free 
inquiry  and  reflective  conviction  for  blind  beliefs  founded 
upon  authority.  Descartes  promulgated  this  famous  rule  of 
his  method :  "The  first  precept  is,  never  to  receive  anything 
for  true  that  I  do  not  know,  upon  evidence,  to  be  such  ;  .  .  . 
and  to  comprise  no  more  within  my  judgments  than  what  is 
presented  so  clearly  and  distinctly  to  my  mind  that  I  have 
no  occasion  to  call  it  in  question."  In  this  declaration  he 
has  not  only  reformed  science  and  revolutionized  philoso- 
phy, but  has  banished  from  the  school  the  old  routine,  the 
mechanical  processes  and  exercises  of  pure  memory,  and 
has  made  a  demand  for  rational  methods  that  excite  the 
intelligence,  awaken  clear  and  distinct  ideas,  and  provoke 
judgment  and  reflection.  Of  course,  it  is  not  proposed  to 
make  a  little  Descartes  out  of  every  child,  despoiling  him 
of  received  beliefs  in  order  to  construct  personal  opinions 
de  novo ;  but  the  rule  of  evidence,  applied  with  moderation 
and  discretion,  is  none  the  less  an  excellent  pedagogical 
precept,  which  will  never  be  disallowed  by  those  who  wish 
to  make  of  the  child  something  more  than  a  mere  machine. 

204.  OBJECTIVE  AND  SUBJECTIVE  PEDAGOGY. — "We  have 
now  reached  a  place  where  we  may  call  into  notice  two  dif- 
ferent tendencies,  equally  legitimate,  which  we  shall  find, 


192  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

with  exaggerations  that  compromise  their  utility,  in  the 
practice  of  modern  teachers.  There  are  those  who  wish 
above  all  to  develop  the  intelligence ;  and  there  are  others 
who  are  preoccupied  with  furnishing  the  mind  with  a  stock 
of  positive  knowledge.  The  first  conceive  instruction  as 
taking  place,  as  it  were,  through  what  is  within,  through  the 
development  of  the  internal  qualities  of  precision  and  meas- 
ure ;  the  others  are  preoccupied  only  with  the  instruction 
that  takes  place  through  what  is  without,  through  an  ex- 
tended erudition,  through  an  accumulation  of  knowledges. 
In  a  word,  if  I  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  some  affect 
a  subjective  pedagogy,  and  others  an  objective  pedagogy. 
Bacon  is  of  the  latter  number.  That  which  preoccupies  the 
great  English  logician  above  everything  else  is  the  exten- 
sion of  observations  and  experiments.  "  To  reason  without 
knowing  anything  of  that  which  we  reason  upon,"  he  says, 
"is  as  if  we  were  to  weigh  or  measure  the  wind."  Des- 
cartes, however,  who  has  never  neglected  the  study  of  facts, 
esteems  them  less  as  material  to  be  accumulated  in  the  mind, 
than  as  instruments  for  training  the  mind  itself.  He  would 
have  repudiated  those  teachers  of  our  day  who  seem  to 
think  the  whole  thing  is  done  when  there  has  been  made  to 
pass  before  the  mental  vision  of  the  child  an  interminable 
series  of  object-lessons,  without  the  thought  of  developing 
that  intelligence  itself. 

205.  MALEBRANCHE  (1638-1715). — "We  must  not  expect 
great  pedagogical  wisdom  from  a  mystical  dreamer  and  reso- 
lute idealist,  who  has  imagined  the  vision  of  all  things  in 
God.  Besides,  Malebranche  has  given  only  a  passing  atten- 
tion to  things  relating  to  education.  The  member  of  a 
teaching  congregation ,  the  Oratory,  he  has  not  taught;  and 
the  whole  effort  of  his  mind  was  spent  in  the  search  for 
metaphysical  truth.  Nevertheless,  it  is  interesting  to  stop 


PHILOSOPHERS  OP  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUiiY.       193 

for  a  moment  this  visionary  who  traverses  the  earth  with 
eyes  fixed  on  the  heavens,  and  inquire  of  him  what  he 
thinks  of  the  very  practical  question,  education. 

206.  SENSE  INSTRUCTION  CONDEMNED.  — Malebranche  will 
reply  to  us,  with  the  prejudices  of  a  metaphysician  of  the 
idealist  type,  that  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  nourish  the  child 
on  abstract  truths.  In  his  view,  souls  have  no  age,  so  to 
speak,  and  the  infant  is  already  capable  of  ideal  contempla- 
tion. Then  let  sense  instruction  be  abandoned,  "  for  this 
is  the  reason  why  children  leave  metaphysical  thoughts,  to 
apply  themselves  to  sensations."  Is  it  objected  that  the 
child  does  not  seem  very  well  adapted  to  meditation  on 
abstract  truths?  It  is  not  so  much  the  fault  of  nature, 
Malebranche  will  reply,  as  of  the  bad  habits  he  has  con- 
tracted. There  is  a  means  of  remedying  this  ordinary  inca- 
pacity of  the  child. 

"If  we  kept  children  from  fear,  from  desires,  and  from 
hope,  if  we  did  not  make  them  suffer  pain,  if  we  removed 
them  as  far  as  possible  from  their  little  pleasures,  then  we 
might  teach  them,  from  the  moment  they  knew  how  to  speak, 
the  most  difficult  and  the  most  abstract  things,  or  at  least  the 
concrete  mathematics,  mechanics." 

Does  Malebranche  hope,  then,  to  suppress,  in  the  life  of 
the  child,  pleasure  and  pain,  and  triumph  over  the  tendencies 
which  ordinary  education  has  developed? 

"As  an  ambitious  man  who  had  just  lost  his  fortune  and 
his  credit  would  not  be  in  a  condition  to  resolve  questions  in 
metaphysics  or  equations  in  algebra,  so  children,  on  whose 
brains  apples  and  sugar-plums  make  as  profound  impressions 
as  are  made  on  those  of  men  of  forty  years  by  offices  and 
titles,  are  not  in  a  condition  to  hear  the  abstract  truths  that 
are  taught  them." 

Consequently,  we  must  declare  war  against  the  senses,  and 


194  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

exclude,  for  example,  all  sorts  of  sensible  rewards.  Only, 
by  a  singular  contradiction,  Malebranche  upholds  material 
punishments  in  the  education  of  children.  The  only  thing 
of  sense  he  retains  is  the  rod.1 

207.  INFLUENCE  OF  MATERIAL  ENVIRONMENT.  —  Another 
contradiction  more  worthy  of  note  is,  that,  notwithstanding  his 
idealism,  Malebranche  believes  in  the  influence  of  physical 
conditions  on  the  development  of  the  soul.     He  does  not  go 
so  far  as  to  say  with  the  materialists  of  our  time,  that  '*  man 
is  what  he  eats  "  ;  but  he  accords  a  certain  amount  of  influ- 
ence to  nourishment.     He  speaks  cheerfully  of  wine  and  of 
"  those  wild  spirits  who  do  not  willingly  submit  to  the  orders 
of  the  will."     He  never  applied  himself  to  work  without  hav- 
ing partaken  of  coffee.     The  soul,  in  his  view,  is  not  a  force 
absolutely  independent  and  isolated,  which  develops  through 
an  internal  activity:  "  we  are  bound,"  he  says,  '"to  every- 
thing, and  stand  in  relations  to  all  that  surrounds  us." 

208.  LOCKE  (1632-1704). —  Locke   is   above   all   else   a 
psychologist,  an  accomplished  master  in  the  art  of  analyzing 
the  origin  of  ideas  and  the  elements  of  the  mental  life.     He 
is  the  head  of  that  school  of  empirical  psychology  that  rallies 
around  its  standard,  Condillac  in  France,  Herbart  in  Ger- 
many, and  in  Great  Britain  Hume  and  other  Scotchmen,  and 

1  Is  not  the  antagonism  pointed  out  by  Malebranche  more  serious  than 
M.  Compayre  seems  to  think?  If  the  current  of  mental  activity  sets 
strongly  towards  the  feelings,  emotions,  or  senses,  it  is  thereby  diverted 
from  the  purely  intellectual  processes,  such  as  reflection  and  judgment. 
The  mind  of  the  savage  is  an  example  of  what  comes  from  "  following  the 
order  of  nature  "  in  an  extreme  training  of  the  senses.  On  the  nature  and 
extent  of  this  antagonism,  the  following  authorities  may  be  consulted: 
Hamilton,  Metaphysics,  p.  336  ;  Mansel.  Metaphysics,  pp.  68,  70,  77  ;  Bain, 
The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  pp.  392-394  ;  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science, 
pp.  17,  29,  37  ;  Spencer,  Principles  of  Psychology,  pp.  98-99.  (P.) 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUKY.      195 

the  most  of  modern  philosophers.  But  from  psychology  to 
pedagogy  the  transition  is  easy,  and  Locke  had  to  make  no 
great  effort  to  become  an  authority  in  education  after  having 
been  an  accomplished  philosopher. 

209.  SOME  THOUGHTS  ON  EDUCATION  (161)3). — The  book 
whk-h  he  published  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  under  the 
modest  title  Some  Thoughts  concerning  Education,  was  the 
summing  up  of  a  long  experience.  A  studious  pupil  at 
Westminster,  he  conceived  from  his  early  3~ears,  as  Descartes 
did  at  La  Fleche,  a  keen  sense  of  repugnance  for  a  purely 
formal  classical  instruction,  and  for  language  studies  in  gen- 
eral, in  which,  nevertheless,  he  attained  distinction.  A 
model  student  at  the  Universit}'  of  Oxford,  he  there  became 
an  accomplished  humanist,  notwithstanding  the  practical  and 
positive  tendency  of  his  mind  that  was  already  drawn  to- 
wards the  natural  sciences  and  researches  in  physics  and  in 
medicine.  Made  Bachelor  of  Arts  in  1656,  and  Master  of  Arts 
in  1658,  he  passed  directly  from  the  student's  bench  to  the 
professor's  chair.  He  was  successively  lecturer  and  tutor  in 
Greek,  but  this  did  not  prevent  him  later  from  eliminating 
Hellenism  almost  completely  from  his  scheme  of  liberal  educa- 
tion. Then  he  became  lecturer  on  rhetoric,  and  finally  on 
moral  philosophy.  When,  in  1666,  he  discontinued  his  schol- 
astic life  to  mingle  in  political  and  diplomatic  affairs,  he  at 
least  carried  from  his  studious  residence  at  Oxford,  the  germs 
of  the  most  of  his  ideas  on  education.  He  sought  occasion  to 
make  an  application  of  them  in  the  education  of  private  indi-' 
viduals,  of  whom  he  was  the  inspirer  and  counsellor,  if  not  the 
official  director.  In  the  families  of  friends  and  hosts  that  he 
frequented,  for  example,  in  that  of  Lord  Shaftesbury,he  made 
a  close  study  of  children  ;  and  it  is  in  studying  them,  and  in 
following  with  a  sagacious  eye  the  successive  steps  of  their 
improvement  in  disposition  and  mind,  that  he  succeeded  in 


196  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

acquiring  that  educational  experience  which  has  left  a  trace 
on  each  page  of  the  Thoughts  concerning  Education.  This 
book,  in  fact,  is  the  issue  of  one  of  Locke's  experiences  as  an 
assistant  in  the  education  of  the  children  of  his  friends. 
Towards  the  year  1684-5,  he  addressed  to  his  friend  Clarke 
a  series  of  letters  which,  retouched  and  slightly  modified, 
have  become  a  classical  work,  simple  and  familiar  in  style,  a 
little  disconnected,  perhaps,  and  abounding  in  repetitious, 
but  the  substance  of  which  is  excellent,  and  the  ideas  as 
remarkable,  in  general,  for  their  originality  as  for  their  just- 
ness. Translated  into  French  in  1695  by  P.  Coste,  and  re- 
printed several  times  in  the  lifetime  of  their  author,  the 
Thoughts  concerning  Education  have  had  a  universal  success. 
They  have  exercised  an  undoubted  influence  on  the  educa- 
tional writings  of  Rousseau  and  Helvetius.  Thej-  have 
received  the  enthusiastic  praise  of  Leibnitz,  who  placed  this 
work  above  that  on  the  Human  Understanding.  "  I  am 
persuaded,"  said  H.  Marion  recently,  in  his  interesting  study 
on  Locke,  "  that  if  an  edition  of  the  Thoughts  were  to  be 
published  to-day  in  a  separate  volume,  it  would  have  a 
marked  success." l 

210.  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  THOUGHTS  CONCERNING  EDUCA- 
TION. —  Without  pretending  to  give  in  this  place  a  detailed 
analysis  of  Locke's  book,  which  deserves  to  be  read  entire, 
and  which  discusses  exhaustively  or  calls  to  notice,  one  after 
another,  almost  all  important  educational  questions,  we  shall 
attempt  to  make  known  the  essential  principles  which  are  to 
be  drawn  from  it.  These  are  :  1.  in  physical  education,  the 
hardening  process;  2.  in  intellectual  education,  practical 
utility  ;  3.  in  moral  education,  the  principle  of  honor,  set  up 
as  a  rule  for  the  free  self-government  of  man. 

1  John  Locke.    His  Life  and  his  Work.    Paris,  1878. 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      197 

211.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION;  THE  HARDENING  PROCESS.  — 
The  ideal  of  education,  according  to  Locke,  is  "  a  sound 
mind  in  a  sound  body."  A  physician  like  Rabelais,  the 
author  of  the  Thoiiglits  concerning  Education  had  special 
competence  in  questions  of  physical  education.  But  a  love 
for  the  paradoxical,  and  an  excessive  tendency  towards  the 
hardening  of  the  body,  have  marred,  on  this  point,  the  re- 
flections of  the  English  philosopher.  He  has  summed  up 
his  precepts  on  this  subject  in  the  following  lines  :  — 

"  The  whole  is  reduced,"  he  says,  "  to  a  small  number  of 
rules,  easy  to  observe  ;  much  air,  exercise,  and  sleep ;  a 
simple  diet,  no  wine  or  strong  liquors  ;  little  or  no  medicine 
at  all ;  garments  that  are  neither  too  tight  nor  too  warm  ; 
finally,  and  above  all,  the  habit  of  keeping  the  head  and  feet 
cold,  of  often  bathing  the  feet  in  cold  water  and  exposing 
them  to  dampness."1  But  it  is  necessary  to  enter  some- 
what into  details,  and  to  examine  closely  some  of  these 
ideas. 

Locke  is  the  first  educator  to  write  a  consecutive  and 
methodical  dissertation  on  the  food,  clothing,  and  sleep  of 
children.  It  is  he  who  has  stated  this  principle,  afterwards 
taken  up  by  Rousseau  :  "•  Leave  to  nature  the  care  of  form- 
ing the  body  as  she  thinks  it  ought  to  be  done."  Hence,  no 
close-fitting  garments,  life  in  the  open  air  and  in  the  sun ; 
children  brought  up  like  peasants,  inured  to  heat  and  cold, 
playing  with  head  and  feet  bare.  In  the  matter  of  food, 
Locke  forbids  sugar,  wine,  spices,  and  flesh,  up  to  the  age 
of  three  or  four.  As  to  fruits,  which  children  often  crave 
with  an  inordinate  appetite,  a  fact  that  is  not  surprising,  he 
pleasantly  remarks,  "  since  it  was  for  an  apple  that  our  first 
parents  lost  paradise,"  he  makes  a  singular  choice.  He 

1  Thouc/hts,  translation  by  G.  Compayre,  p.  57. 


198  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

authorizes  strawberries,  gooseberries,  apples,  and  pears  ;  but 
he  interdicts  peaches,  plums,  and  grapes.  To  excuse  Locke's 
prejudice  against  the  grapes,  it  must  be  recollected  that  he 
lived  in  England,  a  country  in  which  the  vine  grows  with 
difficulty,  and  of  which  an  Italian  said,  "The  only  ripe  fruit  I 
have  seen  in  England  is  a  baked  apple."  As  to  meals, 
Locke  does  not  think  it  important  to  fix  them  at  stated  hours. 
Fe'nelon,  on  the  contrary,  more  judiciously  requires  that  the 
hour  for  repasts  be  absolutely  determined.  But  this  is  not 
the  only  instance  in  which  Locke's  wisdom  is  at  fault. 
What  shall  be  said  of  that  hygienic  fancy  which  consists  in 
allowing  the  child  "  to  have  his  shoes  so  thin,  that  they 
might  leak  and  let  in  water,  whenever  he  comes  near  it "  ? 

It  is  certain  that  Locke  treats  children  with  an  unheard-of 
severity,  all  the  more  surprising  in  the  case  of  one  who  had 
an  infirm  and  delicate  constitution  that  could  be  kept  in 
repair  only  through  precaution  and  management.  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  consequences  of  the  treatment  which  he 
proposes,  applied  to  the  letter,  might  not  be  disastrous. 
Madame  de  Sevign6  was  more  nearly  right  when  she  wrote  : 
"•  If  your  son  is  very  robust,  a  rude  education  is  good  ;  but 
if  he  is  delicate,  I  think  that  in  your  attempts  to  make  him 
robust,  you  would  kill  him."  The  body,  says  Locke,  may  be 
accustomed  to  everything.  We  may  reply  to  this  by  quoting 
an  anecdote  of  Peter  the  Great,  who  one  day  took  it  into  his 
head,  it  is  said,  that  it  would  be  best  for  all  the  sailors  to 
form  the  habit  of  drinking  salt  water.  Immediately  he  pro- 
mulgated an  edict  which  ordered  that  all  naval  cadets  should 
henceforth  drink  only  sea-water.  The  boys  all  died,  and 
there  the  experiment  stopped. 

Still,  without  subscribing  to  Locke's  paradoxes,  which 
have  found  no  one  to  approve  of  them  except  Rousseau,  we 
should  recollect  that  in  his  precepts  on  physical  education  as 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      199 

a  whole,  the  author  of  the  Tlwucjhts  deserves  our  commenda- 
tion for  having  recommended  a  manly  course  of  discipline, 
and  a  frugal  diet,  for  having  discarded  fashionable  conven- 
tionalities and  drawn  near  to  nature,  and  for  having  con- 
demned the  refinements  of  an  indolent  mode  of  life,  and  for 
being  inspired  by  the  simple  and  manly  customs  of  England. 

212.  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  In  the  thought  of  Locke,  moral 
education  takes  precedence  of  instruction  properly  so  called  : 

"  That  which  a  gentleman  ought  to  desire  for  his  son, 
besides  the  fortune  he  leaves  him  is,  1.  virtue  ;  2.  prudence  ; 
3.  good  manners  ;  4.  instruction." 

Virtue  and  prudence  —  that  is,  moral  qualities  and  prac- 
tical qualities  —  are  of  first  consideration.  "Instruction," 
says  Locke  again,  "  is  but  the  least  part  of  education."  In 
the  book  of  Thoughts,  where  repetitions  abound,  there  is 
nothing  more  frequently  repeated  than  the  praise  of  virtue. 

Doubtless  it  may  be  thought  that  Locke,  like  Herbert 
Spencer  in  our  own  day,  cherishes  prejudices  with  respect  to 
instruction,  and  that  he  does  not  take  sufficient  account  of 
the  moralizing  influence  exercised  over  the  heart  and  will  by 
intellectual  enlightenment ;  but,  even  with  this  admission,  we 
must  thank  Locke  for  having  protested  against  the  teachers 
who  think  they  have  done  all  when  they  have  embellished  the 
memory  and  developed  the  intelligence. 

The  grand  tiling  in  education  is  certainly  to  establish  good 
moral  habits,  to  cultivate  noble  sentiments,  and,  finally,  to 
form  virtuous  characters. 

213.  HONOR,  THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   MORAL   DISCIPLINE.  — 
But  after  having  placed  moral  education  in  its  proper  rank, 
which  is  the  first,  it  remains  to  inquire  what  shall  be  the 
principles  and  the  methods  of  this  education.     Shall  it  be 
the  maxim  of  utility,  as  Rousseau  requires?     Must  the  child, 


200  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

before  acting,  inquire  what  is  the  good  of  this?  Cui  bono? 
No  ;  utilitarian  in  instruction  and  in  intellectual  education,  as 
we  have  just  seen,  Locke  is  not  so  in  moral  education. 
Shall  it  be  fear,  shall  "it  be  the  authority  of  the  teacher  or  of 
parents,  founded  on  punishments,  upon  the  slavish  feeling 
of  terror?  Still  less.  Locke  reproves  repressive  discipline, 
and  is  not  inclined  to  chastisements.  Shall  it  be  affection, 
the  love  of  parents,  the  aggregate  of  tender  sentiments? 
Locke  scarcely  speaks  of  them.  Of  too  little  sensibility  him- 
self, he  does  not  seem  to  think  of  all  that  can  be  done  through 
the  sensibility  of  the  child. 

Locke,  who  perhaps  is  wrong  in  treating  the  child  too 
early,  as  though  he  were  a  man,  who  does  not  take  sufficient 
account  of  all  the  feebleness  that  is  in  infant  nature,  appeals 
from  the  first  to  the  sentiment  of  honor,  and  to  the  fear  of 
shame,  that  is,  to  emotions  which,  I  fear,  by  their  very 
nobleness,  are  above  the  powers  of  the  child.  Honor, which 
is,  in  fact,  but  another  name  for  duty,  and  the  ordinary 
synonym  of  virtue,  —  honor  may  assuredly  be  the  guide  of 
an  adult  and  already  trained  conscience ;  but  is  it  not  chi- 
merical to  hope  that  the  child,  from  his  earliest  years,  will  be 
sensible  to  the  esteem  or  the  contempt  of  those  who  surround 
him  ?  If  it  were  possible  to  inspire  a  child  with  a  regard  for 
his  reputation,  I  grant  with  Locke  that  we  might  henceforth 
"  make  of  him  whatever  we  will,  and  teach  him  to  love  all 
the  forms  of  virtue  " ;  but  the  question  is  to  know  whether 
we  can  succeed  in  this,  and  I  doubt  it,  notwithstanding  the 
assurances  of  Locke. 

Kant  has  very  justly  said  :  — 

"  It  is  labor  lost  to  speak  of  duty  to  children.  They  com- 
prehend it  only  as  a  thing  whose  transgression  is  followed  by 
the  ferule.  ...  So  one  ought  not  to  try  to  call  into  play  with 
children  the  feeling  of  shame,  but  to  wait  for  this  till  the 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      201 

period  of  3routh  comes.     In  fact,  it  cannot  be  developed  in 
them  till  the  idea  of  honor  has  already  taken  root  there." 

Locke  is  the  dupe  of  the  same  illusion,  both  when  he 
expects  of  the  child  enough  moral  power  so  that  the  sense  of 
honor  suffices  to  govern  him,  and  when  he  counts  enough  on 
his  intellectual  forces  to  desire  to  reason  with  him  from  the 
moment  he  knows  how  to  speak.  For  forming  good  habits 
in  the  child,  and  preparing  him  for  a  life  of  virtue,  there  is 
full  need  of  all  the  resources  that  nature  and  art  put  at  the 
disposal  of  the  educator,  —  sensibility  under  all  its  forms, 
the  calculations  of  self-interest,  the  lights  of  the  intelligence. 
It  is  only  little  by  little,  and  with  the  progress  of  age,  that 
an  exalted  principle,  like  the  sentiment  of  honor  or  the  senti- 
ment of  duty,  will  be  able  to  emerge  from  out  the  mobile 
humors  of  the  child,  and  dominate  his  actions  like  a  sovereign 
law.  The  moral  pedagogy  of  Locke  is  certainly  faulty  in  that 
it  is  not  sufficiently  addressed  to  the  heart,  and  to  the 
potency  of  loving,  which  is  already  so  great  in  the  child.  I 
add,  that  in  his  haste  to  emancipate  the  child,  to  treat  him  as 
a  reasonable  creature,  and  to  develop  in  him  the  principles 
of  self-government,  Locke  was  wrong  in  proscribing  almost 
absolutely  the  fear  of  punishment.  It  is  good  to  respect  the 
liberty  and  the  dignity  of  the  man  that  is  in  the  child,  but  it 
is  not  necessary  that  this  respect  degenerate  into  supersti- 
tion ;  and  it  is  not  sure  that  to  train  firm  and  robust  wills,  it 
is  necessary  to  have  them  early  affranchised  from  all  fear 
and  all  constraint. 

214.  CONDEMNATION  OF  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENT. — It  is 
undeniable  that  Locke  has  not  sufficiently  enlarged  the  bases 
of  his  theory  of  moral  discipline  ;  but  if  he  has  rested  incom- 
plete in  the  positive  part  of  his  task,  if  he  has  not  advised 
all  that  should  be  done,  he  has  been  more  successful  in  the 


202  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

negative  part,  that  which  consists  in  eliminating  all  that 
ought  not  to  be  done.  The  chapters  devoted  to  punishments 
in  general,  and  in  particular  to  corporal  punishments,  count 
among  the  best  in  the  Thoughts.  Rollin  and  Rousseau  have 
often  copied  from  them.  It  is  true  that  Locke  himself  has 
borrowed  the  suggestion  of  them  from  Montaigne.  The 
"severe  mildness"  which  is  the  pedagogical  rule  of  the 
author  of  the  Essays,  is  also  the  rule  of  Locke.  It  is  in 
accordance  with  this  that  Locke  has  brought  to  bear  on  the 
rod  the  final  judgment  of  good  sense  :  "  The  rod  is  a  slavish 
discipline,  which  makes  a  slavish  temper."  He  has  yielded 
to  the  ideas  of  his  time  on  only  one  point,  when  he  admits 
one  exception  to  the  absolute  interdiction  of  the  rod,  and 
tolerates  its  use  in  extreme  cases  to  overcome  the  obstinate 
and  rebellious  resistance  of  the  child.  This  is  going  too  far 
without  any  doubt ;  but  to  do  justice  to  the  boldness  of 
Locke's  views,  we  must  consider  how  powerful  the"  custom 
then  was,  and  still  is,  in  England,  in  a  country  where  the 
heads  of  institutions  think  themselves  obliged  to  notify  the 
pub-:-c,  in  the  advertisements  published  in  the  journals,  that 
the  interdiction  of  corporal  punishment  counts  among  the 
advantages  of  their  schools.  "It  is  difficult  to  conceive 
the  perseverance  with  which  English  teachers  cling  to  the  old 
and  degrading  customs  of  Corrections  by  the  rod.  ...  A 
more  astonishing  thing  is  that  the  scholars  seem  to  hold  to  it 
as  much  as  the  teachers."  "  In  1818,"  relates  one  of  the 
former  pupils  of  Charterhouse,  "  our  head  master,  Doctor 
Russell,  who  had  ideas  of  his  own,  resolved  to  abolish 
corporal  punishment  and  substitute  for  it  a  fine.  Everybody 
resisted  the  innovation.  The  rod  seemed  to  us  perfectly 
consistent  with  the  dignity  of  a  gentleman ;  but  a  fine,  for 
shame  !  The  school  rose  to  the  cry  :  '  Down  with  the  fine  ! 
Long  live  the  rod ! '  The  revolt  triumphed,  and  the  rod  was 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      203 

solemnly  restored.  Then  we  were  glad-hearted  over  the 
affair.  On  the  next  day  after  the  fine  was  abolished,  we 
found,  on  entering  the  class-room,  a  superb  forest  of  birches, 
and  the  two  hours  of  the  session  were  conscientiously  em- 
ployed in  making  use  of  them."1'2 

215.  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION.  —  In  what  concerns  intel- 
lectual education,  Locke  manifestly  belongs  to  the  school, 
small  in  his  time,  but  more  and  more  numerous  to-day,  of 
utilitarian  teachers.     He  would  train,  not  men  of  letters,  or 
of  science,  but  practical  men,  armed  for  the  battle  of  life,  pro- 
vided with  all  the  knowledge  they  will  need  in  order  to  keep 
their  accounts,  administer  their  fortune,  satisfy  the  require- 
ments of  their  profession,  and,  finally,  to  fulfill  their  duties  as 
men  and  citizens.     In  a  word,  he  wrote  for  a  nation  of  trades- 
men and  citizens. 

216.  UTILITARIAN    STUDIES.  —  An   undeniable    merit   of 
Locke  is  that  of  having  reacted  against  a  purely  formal  in- 
struction, which  substitutes  for  the  acquisition  of  positive 
and  real  knowledge  a  superfluous  culture,  so  to  speak,  a 
training  in  a  superficial  rhetoric  and  an   elegant  verbiage. 
Locke  disdains  and  condemns  studies  that  do  not  contribute 
directly  to  a  preparation  for  life.     Doubtless  he  goes  a  little 

1  Demogeot  et  Montucci,  de  I' ' Enseignement  secondaire  en  Angleterre, 
p.  41. 

2  On  the  question  of  corporal  punishment  in  school,  is  not  M.  Compayre 
too  absolute  in  his  assumptions?    On  what  principle  does  he  hase  his 
absolute  condemnation  of  the  rod  ?    What  is  to  be  done  in  those  cases  of 
revolt  against  order  and  decency  that  occur  from  time  to  time  in  most 
schools?    There  is  no  doubt  that  the  very  best  teachers  can  govern  without 
resorting  to  this  hateful  expedient ;  but  what  shall  be  done  in  extreme  cases 
by  the  multitude  who  are  not,  and  never  can  be,  teachers  of  this  ideal 
type?    Nor  does  this  question  stand  alone.    Below,  it  is  related  to  family 
discipline  ;  and  above,  to  civil  administration.    If  corporal  punishment  is 
interdicted  in  the  school,  should  it  not  be  interdicted  in  the  State  ?    (P.) 


204  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

too  far  in  his  reaction  against  the  current  formalism  and  in 
his  predilection  for  realism.  He  is  too  forgetful  of  the  fact 
that  the  old  classical  studies,  if  not  useful  in  the  positive 
sense  of  the  term,  and  not  satisfying  the  ordinary  needs  of 
existence,  have  yet  a  higher  utility,  in  the  sense  that  they 
may  become,  in  skillful  and  discreet  hands,  an  excellent 
instrument  for  intellectual  discipline  and  the  education  of  the 
judgment.  But  Locke  spoke  to  fanatics  and  pedants,  for 
whom  Latin  and  Greek  were  the  whole  of  instruction,  and 
who,  turning  letters  from  their  true  purpose,  wrongly  made 
a  knowledge  of  the  dead  languages  the  sole  end.  and  not.  as 
should  be  the  case,  one  of  the  means  of  instruction.  Locke 
is  by  no  means  a  blind  utilitarian,  a  coarse  posit ivist,  who 
dreams  of  absolutely  abolishing  disinterested  studies.  He 
wishes  merely  to  put  them  in  their  place,  and  to  guard  against 
investing  them  with  a  sort  of  exclusive  privilege,  and  against 
sacrificing  to  them  other  branches  of  instruction  that  are 
more  essential  and  more  immediately  useful. 

217.  PROGRAMME  OF  STUDIES. — As  soon  as  the  child 
knows  how  to  read  and  write,  he  should  be  taught  to  draw. 
Very  disdainful  of  painting  and  of  the  fine  arts  in  general, 
whose  benign  and  profound  influence  on  the  souls  of  children 
his  colder  nature  has  not  sufficiently  recognized,  Locke,  by 
way  of  compensation,  recommends  drawing,  because  drawing 
may  be  practically  useful,  and  he  puts  it  on  almost  the  same 
footing  as  reading  and  writing. 

These  elements  once  acquired,  the  child  should  be  drilled 
in  the  mother  tongue,  first  in  reading,  and  afterwards  in 
exercises  in  composition,  in  brief  narratives,  in  familiar 
letters,  etc.  The  study  of  a  living  language  (Locke  recom- 
mends French  to  his  countrymen)  should  immediately  follow  ; 
and  it  is  only  after  this  has  been  acquired  that  the  child  shall 
be  put  to  the  study  of  Latin.  Save  the  omission  of  the 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      205 

sciences,  Locke's  plan  is  singularly  like  that  which  for  ten 
years  has  been  in  use  in  the  French  lyce'es. 

As  to  Latin,  which  follows  the  living  language,  Locke 
requires  that  it  shall  be  learned  above  all  through  use, 
through  conversation  if  a  master  can  be  found  who  speaks 
it  fluently,  but  if  not,  through  the  reading  of  authors.  As 
little  of  grammar  as  possible,  no  memoriter  exercises,  no 
Latin  composition,  either  in  prose  or  verse,  but,  as  soon 
as  possible,  the  reading  of  easy  Latin  texts,  —  these  are  the 
recommendations  of  Locke  that  have  been  too  little  heeded. 
The  purpose  is  no  longer  to  learn  Latin  for  the  sake  of 
writing  it  elegantly  ;  the  only  purpose  truly  desirable  is  to 
comprehend  the  authors  who  have  written  in  that  language. 
The  obstinate  partisans  of  Latin  verse  and  conversation  will 
not  read  without  chagrin  these  earnest  protests  of  Locke 
against  exercises  that  have  been  too  much  abused,  and  that 
impose  on  the  learner  the  torment  of  writing  in  a  language 
which  he  handles  with  difficulty,  upon  subjects  which  he  but 
imperfectly  understands.  As  to  Greek,  Locke  proscribes  it 
absolutely.  He  does  not  disparage  the  beauty  of  a  language 
whose  masterpieces,  he  says,  are  the  original  source  of  our 
literature  and  science  ;  but  he  reserves  the  knowledge  of  it 
to  the  learned,  to  the  lettered,  to  professional  scholars,  and 
he  excludes  it  from  secondary  instruction,  which  ought  to  be 
but  the  school  which  trains  for  active  life.  Thus  relieved, 
classical  instruction  will  more  easily  welcome  the  studies  that 
are  of  real  use  and  of  practical  application, — geography, 
which  Locke  places  in  the  first  rank,  because  it  is  "  an  exercise 
of  the  eyes  and  memory  "  ;  arithmetic,  which  "  is  of  so  general 
use  in  all  parts  of  life  and  business,  that  scarce  anything  can 
be  done  without  it "  ;  then  what  he  somewhat  ambitiously 
calls  astronomy,  and  which  is  in  reality  an  elementary  cos- 
mography ;  the  parts  of  geometry  which  are  necessary  for 


206  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

"  a  man  of  business"  ;  chronology  and  history,  "  the  most 
agreeable  and  the  most  instructive  of  studies";  ethics  and 
common  law,  which  do  not  yet  have  a  place  in  French  pro- 
grammes ;  finally,  natural  philosophy,  that  is,  the  physical 
sciences ;  and,  to  crown  all,  a  manual  trade  and  book- 
keeping. 

218.  ATTRACTIVE  STUDIES. — Another  characteristic  of 
Locke's  intellectual  discipline  is,  that,  utilitarian  in  its  pur- 
pose, the  instruction  which  he  organizes  shall  be  attractive 
in  its  methods.  After  hatred  for  the  pedantry  which  use- 
lessly spends  the  powers  of  the  learner  in  barren  studies,  the 
next  strongest  antipathy  of  Locke  is  that  which  is  inspired 
by  the  rigor  of  a  too  didactic  system  of  instruction,  where 
the  methods  are  repulsive,  the  processes  painful,  and  where 
the  teacher  appears  to  his  pupils  only  as  a  bugbear  and  a 
marplot. 

Although  he  may  go  to  extremes  in  this,  he  is  partly  right 
in  wishing  to  bring  into  favor  processes  that  are  inviting  and 
methods  that  are  attractive.  Without  hoping,  as  he  does, 
without  desiring  even,  that  the  pupil  may  come  to  make  no 
distinction  between  study  and  other  diversions,  we  are  dis- 
posed to  believe  that  something  may  be  done  to  alleviate  for 
him  the  first  difficulties  in  learning,  to  entice  and  captivate 
him  without  constraining  him,  and,  finally,  to  spare  him  the 
disgust  which  cannot  fail  to  be  inspired  by  studies  too 
severely  forced  upon  him,  and  which  are  made  the  subject 
of  scourges  and  scoldings.  It  is  especially  for  reading  and 
the  first  exercises  of  the  child  that  Locke  recommends  the 
use  of  instructive  plays.  "  They  may  be  taught  to  road, 
without  perceiving  it  to  be  anything  but  a  sport,  and  play 
themselves  into  that  which  others  are  whipped  for." 

Children  of  every  age  are  jealous  of  their  independence 
and  eager  for  pleasure.  No  one  before  Locke  had  so  clearly 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.      207 

recognized  the  need  of  the  activity  and  liberty  which  are 
natural  to  the  child,  or  so  strongly  insisted  on  the  necessity 
of  respecting  his  independent  disposition  and  his  personal 
tastes.  Here  again  English  pedagogy  of  the  seventeenth 
century  meets  its  illustrious  successor  of  the  nineteenth. 
Herbert  Spencer  has  thoroughly  demonstrated  the  fact  that 
the  mind  really  appropriates  only  the  knowledge  that  affords 
it  pleasure  and  agreeable  exercise.  Now,  there  is  pleasure 
and  agreeable  excitation  wherever  there  is  the  development 
of  a  normal  activity  corresponding  to  an  instinctive  taste 
and  proportioned  to  the  natural  powers  of  the  child  ;  and 
there  is  no  real  instruction  save  at  the  expense  of  a  real 
display  of  activity.1 

219.  SHOULD  THERE  BE  LEARNING  BY  HEART?  —  To  this 
question,  Should  there  be  learning  by  heart?  Locke  gives  a 
resolute  reply  in  the  negative.  The  conclusion  is  absolute 
and  false  ;  but  the  premises  that  he  assumes  to  justify  his 
conclusion  are,  if  possible,  falser  still.  Locke  sets  out  from 
this  psychological  idea,  that  the  memory  is  not  susceptible 
of  progress.  He  brings  into  the  discussion  his  sensualistic 
prejudices,  his  peculiar  conception  of  the  soul,  which  is 


1  It  is  usually  said  that  a  pupil's  distaste  for  a  study  indicates  one  of 
two  things,  either  the  mode  of  presenting  the  subject  is  bad,  or  it  is  pre- 
sented at  an  unseasonable  period  of  mental  development  ;  but  this  distaste 
is  quite  as  likely  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  a  certain  mode  of  mental  activity 
has  not  yet  been  established  ;  for  until  fairly  established,  its  exercise  can- 
not be  pleasurable.  The  assumption  that  intellectual  appetites  already 
exist  and  are  waiting  to  be  gratified,  or  that  they  will  invariably  appear  at 
certain  periods  of  mental  development,  is  by  no  means  a  general  law  of 
the  mental  life.  In  many  cases,  these  appetites  must  be  created,  and  it 
may  often  be  that  the  studies  employed  for  this  purpose  may  not  at  first 
be  relished.  And  there  are  cases  where,  under  the  best  of  skill,  this 
relish  may  never  come  ;  and  still,  the  knowledge  or  the  discipline  is 
so  necessary  that  the  studies  may  be  enforced  contrary  to  the  pupil's 
pleasure.  (P.) 


208  THE    HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

but  a  tabula  rasa,  an  empty  and  inert  capacity,  and  not  a  con- 
geries of  energies  and  of  living  forces  that  are  strengthened 
\)y  exercise.  He  does  not  believe  that  the  faculties,  what- 
ever they  may  be,  can  grow  and  develop,  and  this  for  the 
good  reason,  according  to  his  thinking,  that  the  faculties 
have  no  existence. 

But  here  let  him  speak  for  himself  :  — 

"  I  hear  it  is  said  that  children  should  be  employed  in  get- 
ting things  by  heart,  to  exercise  and  improve  their  memories. 
I  would  wish  this  were  said  with  as  much  authority  and 
reason  as  it  is  with  forwardness  of  assurance,  and  that  this 
practice  were  established  upon  good  observation  more  than 
old  custom.  For  it  is  evident  that  strength  of  memory  is 
owing  to  an  happy  constitution,  and  not  to  any  habitual 
improvement  got  by  exercise.  'Tis  true  what  the  mind  is 
intent  upon,  and,  for  fear  of  letting  it  slip,  often  imprints 
afresh  on  itself  by  frequent  reflection,  that  it  is  apt  to  retain, 
but  still  according  to  its  own  natural  strength  of  retention. 
An  impression  made  on  beeswax  or  lead  will  not  last  so 
long  as  on  brass  or  steel.  Indeed,  if  it  be  renewed  often,  it 
may  last  the  longer ;  but  every  new  reflecting  on  it  is  a  new 
impression,  and  'tis  from  thence  one  is  to  reckon,  if  one 
would  know  how  long  the  mind  retains  it.  But  the  learning 
pages  of  Latin  by  heart  no  more  fits  the  memory  for  reten- 
tion of  anything  else,  than  the  graving  of  one  sentence  in 
lead  makes  it  the  more  capable  of  retaining  firmly  any  other 
characters."  l 

If  Locke  were  right,  education  would  become  wholly  im- 
possible ;  for,  in  case  of  all  the  faculties,  education  supposes 
the  existence  of  a  natural  germ  which  exercise  fertilizes  and 
develops. 

i  Thoughts,  edited  by  R.  H.  Quick  (Cambridge,  18«0),  pp.  153-4. 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUKY.       209 

220.  A  TRADE  SHOULD  BE  LEAKS  ED.  —  Locke,  like  Rous- 
seau, but  for  other  reasons,  wishes  his  pupil  to  learn  a  trade  : 

"  I  can  not  forbear  to  say,  I  would  have  my  gentleman 
learn  a  trade,  a  manual  trade;  nay,  two  or  three,  but  one 
more  particularly."  l 

Rousseau  will  say  the  same:  "Recollect  that  it  is  not 
talent  that  I  require  of  you  ;  it  is  a  trade,  a  real  trade,  a  purely 
mechanical  art,  in  which  the  hands  work  more  than  the  head." 

But  Locke,  in  having  his  gentleman  learn  carpentry  or 
agriculture,  especially  designed  that  this  physical  labor  should 
lend  the  mind  a  diversion,  an  occasion  for  relaxation  and 
repose,  and  secure  to  the  body  a  useful  exercise.  Rousseau 
is  influenced  by  totally  different  ideas.  What  he  wants  is, 
first,  that  through  an  apprenticeship  to  a  trade,  Emile  ma}" 
protect  himself  against  need  in  case  a  revolutionary  crisis 
should  deprive  him  of  his  wealth.  In  the  second  place, 
Rousseau  obeys  his  social,  we  might  even  say  his  socialistic, 
preoccupations.  Work,  in  his  view,  is  a  strict  duty,  from 
which  no  one  can  exempt  himself.  "  Rich  or  poor,  every 
idle  citizen  is  a  knave." 

-. 

221.  WORKING    SCHOOLS.  —  Although   Locke   is   almost 
exclusively  preoccupied  with   classical   studies  and  with  a 
gentleman's    education,   nevertheless  he  has   not   remained 
completely  a  stranger  to  questions  of  primary  instruction. 
In  1697  he  addressed  to  the  English  government  a  remark- 
able document  on  the  importance  of  organizing  "  working 
schools"  for  the  children  of  the  poor.      All  children  over 
three  and  under  fourteen  years  of  age  are  to  be  collected  in 
homes  where   they  will  find  labor  and  food.     In  this  way 
Locke  thought  to  contend  against  immorality  and  pauperism. 
He  would  find  a  remedy  for  the  idleness  and  vagabondage  of 

1  Thoughts,  p.  177. 


THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

the  child,  and  lighten  the  cai-e  of  the  mother  who  is  absorbed 
in  her  work.  He  would  also,  through  habits  of  order  and 
discipline,  train  up  steady  men  and  industrious  workmen.  In 
other  terms,  he  attempted  a  work  of  social  regeneration,  and 
the  tutor  of  gentlemen  became  the  educator  of  the  poor. 

222.  LOCKE  AND  ROUSSEAU.  —  In  the  Entile  we  shall 
frequently  find  passages  inspired  by  him  whom  Rousseau 
calls  "  the  wise  Locke."  Perhaps  we  shall  admire  even  more 
the  practical  qualities  and  the  good  sense  of  the  English 
educator  when  we  shall  have  become  acquainted  with  the 
chimeras  of  his  French  imitator.  In  the  case  of  Locke,  we 
have  to  do,  not  with  an  author  who  wishes  to  shine,  but  with 
a  man  of  sense  and  judgment  who  expresses  his  opinions, 
and  who  has  no  other  pretense  than  to  understand  himself  and 
to  be  comprehended  by  others.  To  appreciate  the  ThougJits 
at  their  full  value,  they  should  not  be  read  till  after  having 
re-read  the  Emile,  which  is  so  much  indebted  to  them.  On 
coming  from  the  reading  of  Rousseau,  after  the  brilliant 
glare  and  almost  the  giddiness  occasioned  his  reader  by  a 
writer  01  genius  whose  imagination  is  ever  on  the  wing, 
whose  passion  urges  him  on,  and  who  mingles  with  so  many 
exalted  truths,  hasty  paradoxes,  and  noisy  declamations,  it 
is  like  repose  and  a  delicious  unbending  to  the  spirit  to  go 
to  the  study  of  Locke,  and  to  find  a  train  of  thought  always 
equable,  a  style  simple  and  dispassionate,  an  author  always 
master  of  himself,  always  correct,  notwithstanding  some 
errors,  and  a  book,  finally,  filled,  not  with  flashes  and  smoke, 
but  with  a  light  that  is  agreeable  and  pure. 

[223.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  This  study  illustrates 
the  fact  that  the  aims  and  methods  of  education  are  deter- 
mined by  the  types  of  thought,  philosophical,  political, 


PHILOSOPHEES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUtfY.      £11 

religious,  scientific,  and  social,  that  happen  to  be  in  the 
ascendent ;  und  also  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to 
adopt  extreme  views. 

2.  The  subjective  tendency  of  human  thought  is  typified 
by  the  Socratic  philosophy,  and  the  objective  tendency  by 
the  Baconian  philosophy  ;  and  from  these  two  main  sources 
have  issued  two  distinctive  schools  of  educators,  the  formal- 
ists and  the  realists,  the  first  holding  that  the  main  purpose 
of  education  is  discipline,   training,  or  formation,  and  the 
other,  that  this  purpose  is  furnishing  instruction  or  informa- 
tion.     This   line    is    distinctly    drawn    in    the    seventeenth 
century,  and  the  two  schools  are  typified  by  Malebranche 
and  Locke. 

3.  The  spirit  of  reaction  is  exhibited  in  the  opposition  to 
classical  studies,  in  "the  effort  to  convert  study  into  a  diver- 
sion, in  the  use  of  milder  means  of  discipline,  and  in  the 
importance  attached  to  useful  studies.     In  these  particulars 
the  reaction  of  the  sixteenth  century  is  intensified.] 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY.  —  JACQUELINE  PASCAL  AND  MADAME  DE 
MAINTENON. 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY;  MADAME 
DE  SEVIGNE  J  THE  ABBE  FLEURY  ;  EDUCATION  IN  CONVENTS  J  PORT 
ROYAL  AND  THE  REGULATIONS  OF  JACQUELINE  PASCAL;  GENERAL 
IMPRESSION;  SEVERITY  AND  AFFECTION;  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF 
SAINT  CYR  ;  TWO  PERIODS  IN  THE  INSTITUTION  OF  SAINT  CYR ; 
DRAMATIC  REPRESENTATIONS  J  THE  REFORM  OF  1692  ;  THE  PART 
PLAYED  BY  MADAME  DE  MAINTENON;  HER  PEDAGOGICAL  WHIT- 
INGS J  INTERIOR  ORGANIZATION  OF  SAINT  CYR  ;  DISTRUST  OF 
READING;  THE  STUDY  OF  HISTORY  NEGLECTED;  INSTRUCTION  INSUF- 
FICIENT; MANUAL  LABOR;  MORAL  EDUCATION;  DISCREET  DEVO- 
TION; SIMPLICITY  IN  ALL  THINGS;  FENELON  AND  SAINT  CYR; 
GENERAL  JUDGMENT;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


224.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY.  — The  Education  of  Girls  of  F6nelon  has  shown  us 
how  far  the  spirit  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  able  to  go 
in  what  concerns  the  education  of  women,  as  exhibited  in 
the  most  liberal  theories  on  the  subject ;  but  in  practice, 
save  in  brilliant  exceptions,  even  the  modest  and  imperfect 
ideal  of  FeYielon  was  far  from  being  attained. 

Chrysale  was  not  alone  of  this  opinion,  when  he  said  in 
the  Learned  Ladies :  — 

"It  is  not  very  proper,  and  for  several  reasons,  that  a 
woman  should  study  and  know  so  many  tilings.  To  train  the 
minds  of  her  children  in  good  morals  and  manners,  to  super- 
intend her  household,  by  keeping  an  eye  on  her  servants, 
and  to  control  the  expenditures  with  economy,  ought  to  be 


EDUCATION   OF   WOMEN.  213 

her  study  and  philosophy."  It  is  true  that  Moliere  himself 
did  not  sympathize  with  the  prejudices  whose  expression  he 
put  in  the  mouth  of  his  comic  character,  and  that  he  con- 
cludes that  a  woman  "  may  be  enlightened  on  every  subject" 
("  Je  consens  qu'une  femme  ait  des  clarte's  de  tout").  But 
in  real  fact  and  in  practice,  it  is  the  opinion  of  Chrysale 
that  prevailed.  Even  in  the  higher  classes,  woman  held 
herself  aloof  from  instruction,  and  from  things  intellectual. 
Madame  Racine  had  never  seen  played,  and  had  probably 
never  read,  the  tragedies  of  her  husband. 

225.  MADAME  DE  SEVIGNE. — However,  the  seventeenth 
century  was  not  wanting  in  women  of  talent  or  genius,  who 
might  have  made  an  eloquent  plea  in  behalf  of  their  sex  ;  but 
they  were  content  to  give  personal  examples  of  a  high  order, 
without  any  anxiety  to  be  imitated.  Madame  de  Lafayette 
made  beautiful  translations  from  Latin ;  Madame  Dacier 
was  a  humanist  of  the  first  order ;  and  Madame  de  SeVigne" 
knew  the  modern  languages  as  well  as  the  ancient.  No  one 
has  better  described  the  advantage  of  reading.  She  recom- 
mends the  reading  of  romances  in  the  following  terms  :  — 

"  I  found  that  a  young  man  became  generous  and  brave 
in  seeing  my  heroes,  and  that  a  girl  became  genteel  and  wise 
in  reading  Cleopatra.  There  are  occasionally  some  who  take 
things  somewhat  amiss,  but  they  would  perhaps  do  scarcely 
any  better  if  they  could  not  read."  ' 

Madame  de  Se'vigne  had  her  daughter  read  Descartes,  and 
her  granddaughter  Pauline,  the  tragedies  of  Corneille. 

"For  my  part,"  she  said,  "  if  I  were  to  bring  up  my 
granddaughter,  I  would  have  her  read  what  is  good,  but  not 
too  simple.  I  would  reason  with  her."; 

1  Lcs  f'oinncs  Savantcs,  Act  11.  Scene  vn.,  Van  Laun's  translation. 

2  Letter  of  Nov.  16, 1689.  3  Letter  of  June  1,  1G80. 


214  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

226.  THE  ABBE  FLEURY. — But  Madame  de  Se>ign£  and 
Madame  de  Grignan  were  but  brilliant  exceptions.     If  one 
were  to  doubt  the  ignorance  of  the  women  of  this  period,  it 
would  suffice  to  read  this  striking  passage  from  the  Abb6 
Fleury,  the  assistant  of   F£nelon  in  the   education    of   the 
Duke  of  Bourgogne  :  — 

"This,  doubtless,  will  be  a  great  paradox,  that  women 
ought  to  learn  anything  else  than  their  catechism,  sewing, 
and  different  little  pieces  of  work,  singing,  dancing,  and 
dressing  in  the  fashion,  and  to  make  a  fine  courtesy.  As 
things  now  go,  this  constitutes  all  their  education."  l 

Fleury  desires  something  else  for  woman.  He  demands 
that  she  learn  to  write  correctly  in  French,  and  that  she 
study  logic  and  arithmetic.  But  we  need  not  fear  lest  the 
liberalism  of  a  thinker  of  the  seventeenth  century  carry  him 
too  far.  Fleury  admits,  for  example,  that  history  is  abso- 
lutely useless  to  women. 

227.  EDUCATION  IN  THE  CONTENTS.  —  It  is  almost  exclu- 
sively  in    convents   that   young    girls   then   received   what 
passed  for  an  education.     The  religious  congregations  that 
devoted    themselves  to  female  education  were  numberless  ; 
we  note,  for  example,  among  the  most  celebrated,  the  Ursu- 
lines,  founded  in  1537 ;   the  Association   of   the  Angelics, 
established  in  Italy  in  1536  ;  and  the  Order  of  Saint  Eliza- 
beth.    But,  notwithstanding  the  diversity  of  names,  all  the 
convents  for  girls  resemble  one  another.     In  all  of   them 
woman  was  educated  for  heaven,  or  for  a  life  of  devotion. 
Spiritual  exercises  formed  the  only  occupation  of  the  pupils, 
and  study  was  scarcely  taken  into  account. 

228.  PORT  ROYAL  AND  THE  REGULATIONS  OF  JACQUELINE 
PASCAL.  — The  best  means  of  penetrating  into  the  inner  life 

1  Traite  du  choix  et  de  la  me'thode  des  etudes,  Chap,  xxxvm. 


EDUCATION   OF   WOMEN.  215 

of  the  convents  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  to  read  the 
Regulations  for  Children,  written  towards  1657  by  Jacqueline 
Pascal,  Sister  Saint  Euphemia.  The  education  of  girls 
interested  the  Jansenists  not  less  than  the  education  of 
men  ;  but  in  this  respect,  Port  Royal  is  far  from  deserving 
the  same  encomiums  in  both  cases. 

229.  GENERAL  IMPRESSION.  — There  is  nothing  so  sombre 
and  sad  as  the  interior  of  their  institution  for  girls,  and 
nothing  so  austere  as  the  rules  of  Jacqueline  Pascal. 

"A  strange  emotion,  even  at  the  distance  of  centuries, 
is  caused  by  the  sight  of  those  children  keeping  silent  or 
speaking  in  a  whisper  from  rising  till  retiring,  never  walking 
except  between  two  nuns,  one  in  front  and  the  other  behind, 
in  order  to  make  it  impossible,  by  slackening  their  pace  on 
the  pretext  of  some  indisposition,  for  them  to  hold  any  com- 
munication ;  working  in  such  a  way  as  never  to  be  in  com- 
panies of  two  or  three ;  passing  from  meditation  to  prayer, 
and  from  prayer  to  instruction  ;  learning,  besides  the  cate- 
chism, nothing  but  reading  and  writing ;  and,  on  Sunday, 
'  a  little  arithmetic,  the  older  from  one  to  two  o'clock,  and 
the  younger  from  two  to  half  past  two ' ;  the  hands  always 
busy  to  prevent  the  mind  from  wandering ;  but  without 
being  able  to  become  attached  to  their  work,  which  would 
please  God  as  much  the  more  as  it  pleased  themselves  the 
less  ;  opposing  all  their  natural  inclinations,  and  despising 
the  attentions  due  the  body  '  destined  to  serve  as  food  for 
worms ' ;  doing  nothing,  in  a  word,  except  in  the  spirit  of 
mortification.  Imagine  those  da}-s  of  fourteen  and  sixteen 
hours,  slowly  succeeding  one  another,  and  weighing  down 
on  the  heads  of  those  poor  little  sisters,  for  six  or  eight 
years  in  that  drear}*  solitude,  where  there  was  nothing  to 
bring  in  the  stir  of  life,  save  the  sound  of  the  bell  announc-/ 


216  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY, 

ing  a  change  of  exercise  or  of  penance,  and  you  will  com- 
prehend Fenelon's  feeling  of  sadness  when  he  speaks  of  th^ 
shadows  of  that  deep  cavern  in  which  was  imprisoned  and, 
as  it  were,  buried  the  youth  of  girls."  * 

230.  SEVERITY  AND  LOVE.  —  The  severity  of  the  Regula- 
tions is  such  that  the  editor,  M.  de  Pontchar train,  also  a 
Jansenist,  allows  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  obtain  from 
all  children  "so  complete  a  silence  and  so  formal  a  life"; 
and  requires  that  the  mistresses  shall  try  to  gain  their  affec- 
tions. Love  must  be  united  with  severity.  Jacqueline 
Pascal  does  not  seem  to  be  entirely  of  this  opinion,  since 
she  declares  that  only  God  must  be  loved.  However,  not- 
withstanding her  habitual  severity,  human  tenderness  some- 
times asserts  its  rights  in  the  rules  which  she  established. 
We  feel  that  she  loves  more  than  she  confesses,  those  young 
girls  whom  she  calls  "little  doves."  On  the  one  hand, 
the  Regulations  incite  the  pupils  to  eat  of  what  is  placed 
before  them  indifferently,  and  to  begin  with  what  they  like 
the  least,  through  a  spirit  of  penitence ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  Jacqueline  writes:  "They  must  be  exhorted  to  take 
sufficient  nourishment  so  as  not  to  allow  themselves  to 
become  weakened,  and  this  is  why  care  is  taken  that  they 
have  eaten  enough."  And  so  there  is  a  touching  solicitude 
that  is  almost  maternal  in  this  remark  :  "  As  soon  as  they 
have  retired,  each  particular  bed  must  be  visited,  to  see 
whether  all  proprieties  have  been  observed,  and  whether  the 
children  are  well  covered  in  winter."  The  mystic  sister  of 
the  ascetic  Pascal  has  moments  of  tenderness.  "Never- 
theless, we  must  not  cease  to  feel  pity  for  them,  and  to 
accommodate  ourselves  to  them  in  every  way  that  we  can, 
but  without  letting  them  know  that  we  have  thus  conde- 

1  Greard,  Meinoire  stir  I'easeit/nement  secondaire  desjilles,  p.  55. 


EDUCATION   OF  WOMEN.  217 

scencled."  However,  the  dominant  conception  ever  reap- 
pearing, is  the  idea  that  human  nature  is  evil ;  that  we  have 
to  do  with  rebellious  spirits  which  must  be  conquered,  and 
that  they  deserve  no  commiseration. 

There  is  a  deal  of  anxiety  to  make  study  agreeable ! 
Jacqueline  directs  her  pupils  to  work  at  the  very  things  that 
are  most  repulsive,  because  the  work  that  will  please  God 
the  most  is  that  which  will  please  them  the  least.  The 
exterior  manifestations  of  friendship  are  forbidden,  and 
possibly  friendship  itself.  "  Our  pupils  shall  shun  every  sort 
of  familiarity  one  towards  another." 

Instruction  is  reduced  to  the  catechism,  to  the  application 
of  the  Christian  virtues,  to  reading,  and  to  writing.  Arith- 
metic is  not  taught  save  on  holidays.  It  seems  that  memory 
is  the  only  faculty  that  Jacqueline  wishes  to  have  developed. 
"This  opens  their  minds,  gives  them  occupation,  and  keeps 
them  from  evil  thoughts."  Have  we  not  reason  to  say  that 
at  Port  Royal  women  have  less  value  than  men  !  What  a 
distance  between  the  solid  instruction  of  Lancelot's  and 
Nicole's  pupils  and  the  ignorance  of  Jacqueline  Pascal's  ! 
Even  when  the  men  of  Port  Royal  speak  of  the  education 
of  women,  they  have  more  liberal  ideas  than  those  which  ore 
applied  at  their  side.  Nicole  declares  that  books  are  neces- 
sary even  in  convents  for  girls,  because  it  is  necessary  "  to 
sustain  prayer  by  reading." 

231.  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  SAINT  CYR.  —  In  leaving 
Port  Royal  for  Saint  Cyr,  we  seem,  on  coming  out  of  a 
profound  night,  to  perceive  a  ray  of  light.  Without  doubt, 
Madame  de  Maintenon  has  not  yet,  as  a  teacher,  all  that 
breadth  of  view  that  could  be  desired.  Her  work  is  fnr 
from  being  faultless,  but  the  founding  of  Saint  Cyr  (1G86) 
was  none  the  less  a  considerable  innovation.  "  Saint  Cyr," 
it  lias  been  said,  "  is  not  a  convent.  It  is  a  great  establish- 


218  THE   HISTOltY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ment  devoted  to  the  lay  education  of  young  women  of 
uoble  birth  ;  it  is  a  bold  and  intelligent  secularization  of  the 
education  of  women."  There  is  some  excess  of  praise  in 
this  statement,  and  the  lay  character  of  Saint  Cyr  is  very 
questionable.  Lavalle'e,  an  admirer,  could  write :  "  The 
instructions  of  Madame  de  Maintenon  are  doubtless  too 
religious,  too  monastic."  Let  us  grant,  however,  that 
Madame  de  Maintenon,  who,  after  having  founded  Saint 
Cyr,  was  the  director  of  it,  extra  muros,  and  even  taught 
there,  at  stated  times,  is  personally  the  first  lay  teacher  of 
France.  Let  us  grant,  also,  that  at  least  in  the  beginning. 
and  up  to  1692,  the  women  entrusted  with  i*ie  work  of 
instruction  were  not  nuns  in  the  absolute  sense  of  the  term. 
They  were  not  bound  by  solemn  and  absolute  vows. 

But  this  character  relatively  laic,  and  this  rupture  with 
monastic  traditions,  were  not  maintained  during  the  whole 
life  of  the  institution. 

232.  Two  PERIODS  IN  THE  HISTORV  OF  SAINT  CYR.  — 
Saint  Cyr,  in  fact,  passed,  within  a  few  years,  through  two 
very  different  periods,  and  Madame  de  Maintenon  followed 
in  succession  two  almost  opposite  currents.  For  the  first 
years,  from  1686  to  1692,  the  spirit  of  the  institution  is 
broad  and  liberal ;  the  education  is  brilliant,  perhaps  too 
much  so ;  literary  exercises  and  dramatic  representations 
have  an  honored  place.  Saint  Cyr  is  an  institution  inclining 
to  worldliness,  better  fitted  to  train  women  of  intellect  than 
good  economists  and  housewives.  Madame  de  Maintenon 
quickly  saw  that  she  had  taken  a  false  route,  and,  from 
1692,  she  reacted,  not  without  excess,  against  the  tendencies 
which  she  had  at  first  obeyed.  She  conceived  an  extreme 
distrust  of  literary  studies,  and  cut  off  all  she  could  from  the 
instruction,  in  order  to  give  her  entire  thought  to  the  moral 
and  practical  qualities  of  her  pupils.  Saint  Cyr  became  a 


EDUCATION    OF   WOMEN.  219 

convent,  with  a  little  more  liberty,  doubtless,  than  there  was 
in  the  other  monasteries  of  the  time,  but  it  was  a  convent 

still. 

233.  DRAMATIC  REPRESENTATIONS.  — It  was  the  notorious 
success  of  the  performance  of  Andromaque  and  Esther  th:it 
caused  the  overthrow  of  the  original  intentions  of  Madame 
de  Malntenon.     Esther,  in  particular,  was  the  great  event 
of  the  first  years  of    Saint  Cyr.      Racine    distributed   the 
parts  ;  Boileau  conducted  the  training  in  elocution  ;  and  the 
entire   Court,  the  king  at  the  head,  came  to  applaud  and 
entertain  the  pretty  actresses,  who  left  nothing  undone  to 
please  their  spectators.     Heads  were  a  little  turned  by  all 
this ;    dissipation   crept  into  the    school.     The   pupils  were 
no  longer  willing  to  sing  in  church,  for  fear  of  spoiling  their 
voices.      Evidently  the    route   was    now  over  a   dangerous 
declivity.    The  institution  had  been  turned  from  its  purpose. 
Matters  were   in  a  way  to  establish,  under  another  form, 
another  H6tel  de  Rambouillet.1 

234.  REFORM  OF  1692. — At  the  first,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  ladies  of  Saint  Louis,  charged  with  the  direction  of  Saint 
Cyr,  did  not  found  a  monastic  order  properly  so-called  ;  but, 
when  Madame  de  Maintenon  resolved  to  reform  the  general 
spirit  of  the  house,  she  thought  it  necessary  to  transform 
Saint  Cyr  into  a  mouasteiy,  and  she  founded  the  Order  of 
Saint  Augustine. 

1  "  The  name  generally  given  to  a  social  circle,  which  for  more  than  half 
a  century  gathered  around  Catherine  de  Vivonne,  marquise  de  Rambouillet, 
and  her  daughter,  Julie  d'Angennes,  duchess  de  Montausier,  and  which 
exercised  a  very  conspicuous  influence  on  French  language,  literature,  and 
civilization.  .  .  .  Her  house  soon  became  the  place  where  all  who  had 
genius,  wit,  learning,  talent,  or  taste,  assembled,  and  from  these  reunions 
originated  the  French  Academy,  the  highest  authority  of  French  literature, 
and  the  salons,  the  most  prominent  feature  of  French  civilization." 

—  Johnson's  Cyclopsedia. 


220  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

But  what  she  changed  in  particular  was  the  moral  dis- 
cipline, and  the  programme  of  studies. 

Madame  de  Maintenon  has  herself  recited,  in  a  memorable 
letter,1  the  reasons  of  that  reform  which  modified  so  pro- 
foundly the  character  of  Saint  Cyr  :  — 

"  The  sorrow  I  feel  for  the  girls  of  Saint  Cyr,"  she  said, 
"  can  be  cured  only  by  time  and  by  an  entire  change  in  the 
education  that  we  have  given  them  up  to  this  hour.  It  is 
very  just  that  I  should  suffer  for  this,  since  I  have  contri- 
buted to  it  more  than  any  one  else.  .  .  .  The  whole  establish- 
ment has  been  the  object  of  my  pride,  and  the  ground  for 
this  feeling  has  been  so  real  that  it  has  gone  to  extremes  that 
I  never  intended.  God  knows  that  I  wished  to  establish 
virtue  at  Saint  Cyr,  but  I  have  built  upon  the  sand.  Not 
having,  what  alone  can  make  a  solid  foundation,  I  wished 
the  girls  to  be  witty,  high-spirited,  and  trained  to  think  ;  I 
have  succeeded  in  this  purpose.  They  have  wit,  and  they 
use  it  against  us.  They  are  high-spirited,  and  are  more 
heady  and  haughty  than  would  be  becoming  in  a  royal 
princess.  Speaking  after  the  manner  of  the  world,  we  have 
trained  their  reason,  and  have  made  them  talkative,  pre- 
sumptuous, inquisitive,  bold  .  .  .  witty,  —  such  characters  as 
even  we  who  have  trained  them  cannot  abide.  .  .  .  Let  us 
seek  a  remedy,  for  we  must  not  be  discouraged.  .  .  .  As 
many  little  things  form  pride,  many  little  things  will  destroy 
it.  Our  girls  have  been  treated  with  too  much  consideration, 
have  been  petted  too  much,  treated  too  gently.  We  must 
now  leave  them  more  to  themselves  in  their  class-rooms, 
make  them  observe  the  daily  regulations,  and  speak  to  them 
of  scarcely  anything  else.  .  .  .  Pray  to  God,  and  ask  Him  to 
change  their  hearts  ;  and  that  He  may  give  to  all  of  them 

1  See  the  Letter  to  Madame  de  Fontaine,  general  mistress  of  the  school, 
Sept.  20,  1691. 


EDUCATION    OF    WOMEN.  221 

humility.  There  should  not  be  much  conversation  with  them 
on  the  subject.  Everything  at  Saint  Cyr  is  made  a  matter  of 
discourse.  We  often  speak  of  simplicity,  and  try  to  define 
it  correctly  .  .  .  and  yet,  in  practice,  the  girls  make  merry  in 
saying :  '  Through  simplicity  I  take  the  best  place  ;  through 
simplicity  I  am  going  to  commend  myself.'  Our  girls  must 
be  cured  of  that  jesting  turn  of  mind  which  I  have  given 
them.  .  .  .  We  have  wished  to  shun  the  pettiness  of  certain 
convents,  and  God  has  punished  us  for  this  haughty  spirit. 
There  is  no  house  in  the  world  that  has  more  need  of  humility 
within  and  without  than  our  own.  Its  situation  near  the 
Court ;  the  air  of  favor  that  pervades  it ;  the  favors  of  a 
great  king;  the  offices  of  a  person  of  consideration,  —  all 
these  snares,  so  full  of  danger,  should  lead  us  to  take  meas- 
ures directly  contrary  to  those  we  have  really  taken.  ..." 

235.  THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  MADAME  DE  MAINTENON.  — 
Whatever  may  be  the  opinion  respecting  the  tone  of  the  edu- 
cational work  at  Saint  Cyr,  there  cannot  be  the  least  doubt 
as  to  the  admirable  zeal  of  Madame  de  Maintenon,  and  her 
indefatigable  devotion  to  the  success  of  her  favorite  under- 
taking. The  vocation  of  the  teacher  was  evidently  hers. 
For  more  than  thirty  years,  from  1686  to  1717,  she  did  not 
cease  to  visit  Saint  Cyr  every  day,  sometimes  at  six  in  the 
morning.  She  wrote  for  the  directresses  and  for  the  pupils 
counsels  and  regulations  that  fill  several  volumes.  Nothing 
which  concerns  "  her  children"  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
her.  She  devotes  her  attention  to  their  meals,  their  sleep, 
their  toilet,  as  well  as  to  their  character  and  their  instruc- 
tion :  — 

' '  The  affairs  we  discuss  at  Court  are  bagatelles  ;  those  at 
Saint  Cyr  are  the  more  important.  .  .  ."  "May  that  establish- 
ment last  as  long  as  France,  and  France  as  long  as  the  world. 
Nothing  is  dearer  to  me  than  my  children  of  Saint  Cyr." 


222  THE   HISTOllY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  not  tenderness,  it  is  well  known,  that  characterizes 
the  soul  of  Madame  de  Maintenon ;  but,  at  Saint  Cyr.  from 
being  formal  and  cold,  which  is  her  usual  state,  she  becomes 
loving  and  tender  :  — - 

"  Forget  nothing  that  may  save  the  souls  of  our  young 
girls,  that  may  fortify  their  health  and  preserve  their  form." 

One  day,  as  she  had  come  to  the  school,  as  her  custom  was, 
to  consult  with  the  nuns,  a  company  of  girls  passed  by  raising 
a  cloud  of  dust.  The  nuns,  fearing  that  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon  was  annoyed  by  it,  requested  them  to  withdraw. 
"  Prav,  let  the  dear  girls  be,"  replied  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon ;  "I  love  them  even  to  the  dust  they  raise."  Con- 
vcrseh",  as  it  were,  the  pupils  of  Pestalozzi,  consulted  on 
the  question  of  knowing  whether  they  were  willing  always  to 
be  beaten  and  clawed  by  their  old  master,  replied  affirm- 
atively :  they  loved  him  even  to  his  claws ! 

236.  HER  PEDAGOGICAL  "WRITINGS.  — It  is  only  in  our 
day  that  the  works  of  Madame  de  Maintenon  have  been 
published  in  the  integrity  of  their  text,  thanks  to  the  labors 
of  Th£ophile  Lavall£e.  For  the  most  part,  these  long  and 
interesting  letters  are  devoted  to  education  and  to  Saint  Cyr. 
These  are,  first,  the  Letters  and  Conversations  on  the  Educa- 
tion of  Girls.1  These  letters  were  written  from  day  to  day, 
and  are  addressed,  sometimes  to  the  ladies  of  Saint  Cyr.  and 
sometimes  to  the  pupils  themselves.  "  AVe  find  in  them," 
says  Lavalle'e,  "  for  all  circumstances  and  for  all  times,  the 
most  solid  teaching,  masterpieces  of  good  sense,  of  natural- 
ness, and  of  truth,  and,  finally,  instructions  relative  to  educa- 
tion that  approach  perfection.  The  Conversations  originated 
in  the  consultations  that  Madame  de  Maintenon  had  during 
the  recreations  or  the  recitations,  either  with  the  ladies  or 

1  Two  volumes,  2d  edition,  1861. 


EDUCATION   OF    WOMEN.  223 

with  the  young  women,  who  themselves  collected  and  edited 
the  words  of  their  governess." 

After  the  Letters  and  Conversations  comes  the  Counsels  to 
Young  Women  who  enter  Society,1  which  contain  general 
advice,  conversations  or  dialogues,  and,  finally,  proverbs, 
that  is,  short  dramatic  compositions,  designed  at  once  to 
instruct  and  amuse  the  young  ladies  of  Saint  Cyr.  These 
essays  are  not  admirable  in  all  respects  ;  most  often  they  are 
lacking  in  imagination  ;  and  Madame  de  Maintenon,  though 
an  imitation  of  F6nelon,  makes  a  misuse  of  indirect  instruc- 
tion, of  artifice,  and  of  amusement,  in  order  to  teach  some 
moral  commonplaces  by  insinuation.  Here  are  the  titles  of 
some  of  these  proverbs:  The  occasion  makes  the  rogue; 
Women  make  and  unmake  the  home;  Tliere  is  no  situation 
more  embarrassing  than  that  of  holding  the  handle  of  the  fry- 
ing-pan. 

Finally,  let  us  note  the  third  collection,  the  Historical  and 
Instructive  Letters  addressed  to  the  Ladies  of  Saint  Cyr.2 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that,  out  of  these  numerous  volumes, 
where  repetitions  abound,  there  have  not  been  extracted,  in 
a  methodical  manner,  a  few  hundred  pages  which  should 
contain  the  substance  of  Madame  de  Maintenon's  thinking 
on  educational  questions. 

237.  INTERIOR  ORGANIZATION.  — The  purpose  of  the  found- 
ing of  Saint  Cyr  was  to  assure  to  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
daughters  of  the  poor  nobility,  and  to  the  children  of  officers 
dead  or  disabled,  an  educational  retreat  where  they  would  be 
suitably  educated  so  as  to  be  prepared  for  becoming  either 
nuns,  if  this  was  their  vocation,  or,  the  more  often,  good 
mothers.  As  M,.  Gre'ard  has  justly  observed,  "the  very 
conception  of  an  establishment  of  this  kind,  the  idea  of 

i  Two  volumes,  1857.  2  Two  volumes,  1860. 


224  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

making  France  pay  the  debt  of  France,  educating  the  chil- 
dren of  those  who  had  given  her  their  blood,  proceeds  from 
u  feeling  up  to  that  time  unknown."1 

Consequently,  children  of  the  tenderest  years,  from  six  or 
seven,  were  received  at  Saint  Cyr,  there  to  be  cared  for  till 
the  age  of  marriage,  till  eighteen  and  twenty. 

The  young  girls  were  divided  into  four  classes,  —  the  reds, 
the  greens,  the  yellows,  and  the  blues.  The  blues  were  the 
largest,  and  they  wore  the  royal  colors.  Each  class  was 
divided  into  five  or  six  bands  or  families,  of  eight  or  ten 
pupils  each. 

The  ladies  of  Saint  Cyr  were  ordinarily  taken  from  the 
pupils  of  the  school.  They  were  forty  in  number, — the  supe- 
rior, the  assistant  who  supplied  the  place  of  the  superior, 
the  mistress  of  the  novices,  the  general  mistress  of  the 
classes,  the  mistresses  of  the  classes,  etc. 

The  capital  defect  of  Saint  Cyr  is,  that,  as  in  the  colleges 
of  the  Jesuits,  the  residence  is  absolute  and  the  sequestra- 
tion complete.  From  her  fifth  to  her  twentieth  year  the 
young  girl  belongs  entirely  to  Saint  Cyr.  She  scarcely 
knows  her  parents.  It  will  be  said,  perhaps,  that  in  many 
cases  she  has  lost  them,  and  that  in  some  cases  she  could 
expect  only  bad  examples  from  them.  But  no  matter  ;  the 
general  rule,  which  interrupted  family  intercourse  to  the 
extent  of  almost  abolishing  it,  cannot  obtain  our  approbation. 
The  girl  was  permitted  to  see  her  parents  only  three  or  four 
times  a  year,  and  even  then  these  interviews  would  last  only 
lor  a  half  an  hour  each  time,  and  in  the  presence  of  a  mis- 
tress. There  was  permission  to  write  family  letters  from 
time  to  time  ;  but  as  though  she  mistrusted  the  natural  im- 
pulses of  the  heart,  and  the  free  outpouring'of  filial  affection, 
Madame  de  Maiutenon  had  taken  care  to  compose  some  models 

1  M.  Greard,  Memoire  sur  I'enseignement  secondaire  desjillcs,  1882,  p.  59. 


EDUCATION    OF    WOMEN.  225 

of  these  letters.  With  more  of  reason  than  of  feeling,  Madame 
de  Maintenon  is  not  exempt  from  a  certain  coldness  of  heart. 
It  seems  that  she  would  impose  on  her  pupils  the  extraordi- 
nary habits  of  her  own  family.  She  recollected  having  been 
kissed  only  twice  by  her  mother,  on  her  forehead,  and  then 
only  after  a  long  separation. 

238.  DISTRUST  OF  READING.  —  After  the  reforms  of  1692, 
the  instruction  at  Saint  Cyr  became  a  matter  of  secondary 
importance.      Reading,  writing,  and  counting  were  taught, 
but  scarcely  anything  besides.     Reading,   in  general,  was 
viewed  with  distrust :   ' l  Teach  girls  to  be  very  sparing  as  to 
reading,  and  always  to  prefer  manual  labor  instead."     Books 
of  a  secular  nature  were  interdicted  ;  only  works  of  piety 
were  put  in  the  hands  of  pupils,  such  as  the  Introduction  to  a 
Devout  Life,  by  Saint  Frangois  de  Salles,  and  the  Confessions 
of  Saint  Augustine.     "  Renounce  intellectual  culture"  is  the 
perpetual  injunction  of  Madame  de  Maintenon. 

"We  must  educate  citizens  for  citizenship.  It  is  not  the 
question  of  giving  them  intellectual  culture.  We  must 
preach  family  duties  to  them,  obedience  to  husband,  and  care 
for  children.  .  .  .  Reading  does  more  harm  than  good  to 
young  girls.  .  ,  .  Books  make  witlings  and  excite  an  in- 
satiable curiosity." 

239.  THE  STUDY  OF  HISTORY  NEGLECTED. — To  judge  of 
the  spirit  of  Saint  Cyr,  from  the  point  of  view  of  intellectual 
education,  it  suffices  to  note  the  little  importance  that  was 
there  given  to  history.     This  went  so  far  as  to  raise  the 
question  whether  it  were  not  best  to  prohibit  the  study  of 
French  history  entirely.     Madame  de  Maintenon  consents  to 
have  it  taught,  but  only  just  enough  so  that  "  pupils  may 
not  confuse  the  succession  of  our  kings  with  the  princes  of 
other  countries,   and    not   take    a   Roman   emperor    for  an 


226  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

emperor  of  China  or  Japan,  a  king  of  Spain  or  of  England 
for  a  king  of  Persia  or  of  Siam."  As  to  the  history  of  anti- 
quity, it  must  be  held  in  mistrust  for  the  very  reason — who 
would  believe  it?  —  of  the  beautiful  examples  of  virtue  that 
it  contains.  "I  should  fear  that  those  grand  examples  of 
generosity  and  heroism  would  give  our  }~oung  girls  too  much 
elevation  of  spirit,  and  make  them  vain  and  pretentious." 
Have  we  not  some  right  to  feel  surprised  that  Madame  de 
Maiiitenon  is  alarmed  at  the  thought  of  raising  the  intelligence 
of  woman?  It  is  true  that  she  doubtless  thought  of  the 
romantic  exaggerations  produced  by  the  reading  of  the  Cyrus 
the  Great  and  other  writings  of  Mile,  de  Scude"ry.  Let  us 
add,  besides,  to  excuse  the  shortcomings  of  the  programme 
of  Saint  Cyr  in  the  matter  of  history,  that  even  for  boys  in 
the  colleges  of  the  University,  the  order  that  introduced  the 
teaching  of  history  into  the  classes  dates  only  from  1695. 

240.  INSUFFICIENT  INSTRUCTION.  —  "  Our  day,"  says  Laval- 
le"e,  "  would  not  accept  that  education  in  which  instruction 
properly  so-called  was  but  a  secondary  matter,  and  entirely 
sacrificed  to  the  manner  of  training  the  heart,  the  reason,  and 
the  character  ;  and  an  education,  too,  that,  as  a  whole  and  in 
its  details,  was  wholly  religious."     The  error  of  Madame  de 
Maintenon   consists    essentially  in  the  wish  to  develop  the 
moral  virtues  in  souls  scarcely  instructed,  scarcely  enlightened. 
There  was  much  moral  discoursing  at  Saint  Cyr.     If  it  did 
not  always  bear  fruit,  it  was  because  the  seed  fell  into  intel- 
ligences that  were  but  little  cultivated. 

"  Our  young  women  are  not  to  be  made  scholarly.  Women 
never  know  except  by  halves,  and  the  little  that  they  know 
usually  makes  them  conceited,  disdainful,  chatty,  and  dis- 
gusted with  serious  things." 

241.  MANUAL     LABOR. — If    intellectual    education    was 
neglected  at  Saint  Cyr,  by  way  of  compensation  great  atten- 


EDUCATION   OF    WOMEN.  227 

tion  was  paid  to  manual  education.  The  girls  were  there 
taught  to  sew,  to  embroider,  to  knit,  and  to  make  tapestry ; 
and  there  was  also  made  there  all  the  linen  for  the  house, 
the  infirmary,  and  the  chapel,  and  the  dresses  and  clothing 
of  the  ladies  and  the  pupils  :  — 

"  But  no  exquisite  productions,"  says  Madame  de  Mainte- 
noii,  "  nor  of  ver}-  elaborate  design  ;  none  of  those  flimsy 
edgings  in  embroidery  or  tapestry,  which  are  of  no  use." 

With  what  good  grace  Madame  de  Maintenon  ever  preaches 
the  gospel  of  labor,  of  which  she  herself  gave  the  example  ! 
In  the  coaches  of  the  king,  she  always  had  some  work  in 
hand.  At  Saint  Cyr,  the  young  women  swept  the  dormitories, 
put  in  order  the  refector}-,  and  dusted  the  class-rooms.  ' '  They 
must  be  put  at  every  kind  of  service,  and  made  to  work  at 
what  is  burdensome,  in  order  to  make  them  robust,  healthy, 
and  intelligent." 

"  Manual  labor  is  a  moral  safeguard,  a  protection  against 
sin." 

"  Work  calms  the  passions,  occupies  the  mind,  and  does 
not  leave  it  time  to  think  of  evil." 

242.  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  "  The  Institute,"  said  Ma- 
dame de  Maintenon,  "  is  intended,  not  for  prayer,  but  for 
action."  What  she  wished,  above  all  else,  was  to  prepare 
young  women  for  home  and  family  life.  She  devoted  her 
thought  to  the  training  of  wives  and  mothers.  "What  I  lack 
most,"  she  said,  "is  sons-in-law!"  Hence  she  was  inces- 
santly preoccupied  with  moral  qualities.  One  might  make 
n  fine  and  valuable  book  of  selections  out  of  all  the  practical 
maxims  of  Madame  de  Maintenon  ;  as  her  reflections  on 
talkativeness:  "There  is  always  sin  in  a  multitude  of 
words  ;  "  on  indolence  :  "  What  can  be  done  in  the  family  of 
an  indolent  and  fastidious  woman ?"  on  politeness,  "which 
consists,  above  all  else,  in  giving  one's  thought  to  others  ;  " 


228  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

on  lack  of  energy,  then  too  common  among  women  of  the 
world :  "  The  only  concern  is  to  eat  and  to  take  one's  ease. 
Women  spend  the  day  in  morning-gowns,  reclining  in  easy- 
chairs,  without  any  occupation,  and  without  conversation  ; 
all  is  well,  provided  one  be  in  a  state  of  repose." 

243.  DISCREET  DEVOTION.  — "We  must  not  imagine  that 
Saint  Cyr  was  a  house  of  prayer,  a  place  of  overdone  devo- 
tion. Madame  de  Maintenon  held  to  a  reasonable  Christianity. 
Piety,  such  as  was  recommended  at  Saint  Cyr,  is  a  piety  that 
is  steadfast,  judicious,  and  simple;  that  is,  conformed  to  the 
state  in  which  one  ought  to  live,  and  exempt  from  refine- 
ments. 

"The  young  women  are  too  much  at  church,  considering 
their  age,"  she  wrote  to  Madame  de  Brinon,  the  first  director 
of  the  institution.  .  .  .  "Consider,  I  pray  you,  that  this  is 
not  to  be  a  cloister." l 

And  later,  after  the  reform  had  begun,  this  is  what  she 
wrote  :  — 

"  Let  the  piety  with  which  our  young  girls  shall  be  in- 
spired be  cheerful,  gentle,  and  free.  Let  it  consist  rather 
in  the  innocence  of  their  lives,  and  in  the  simplicity  of  their 
occupations,  than  in  the  austerities,  the  retirements,  and  the 
refinements  of  devotion.  .  .  .  When  a  girl  comes  from  a 
convent,  saying  that  nothing  ought  to  interfere  with  vespers, 
she  is  laughed  at ;  but  when  an  educated  woman  shall  say 
that  vespers  may  be  omitted  for  the  sake  of  attending  lu-r 
sick  husband,  everybody  will  commend  her.  .  .  .  When  a 
girl  shall  say  that  a  woman  does  better  to  educate  her  children 
and  instruct  her  servants  than  to  spend  the  forenoon  in 
church,  that  religion  will  be  heartily  accepted,  and  will  make 
itself  loved  and  respected."1  Excellent  advice,  perhaps  too 

1  Lettrts  hisloriques,  Tome  I.  p.  48. 
^Lettres  historiques,  Tome  I.  p.  89. 


EDUCATION    OF    WOMEN.  229 

little  followed !  Madame  de  Maintenon  here  speaks  the  lan- 
guage of  good  sense,  and  we  are  wholly  surprised  to  hear  it 
from  the  lips  of  a  politic  woman  who,  not  without  reason,  and 
for  her  part  in  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  has 
the  reputation  of  being  an  intolerant  fanatic. 

244.  SIMPLICITY  IN  ALL  THINGS.  —  The  simplicity  which 
she  recommended   in  religion,   Ma'dame  de  Maintenon  de- 
manded in  everything,  —  in  dress  and  in  language  :  "  Young 
girls,"  she  says,  "  must  wear  as  few  ribbons  as  possible." 

A  class-teacher  had  given  a  fine  lecture,  in  which  she  ex- 
horted her  pupils  to  make  an  "eternal  divorce"  with  sin. 
"Very  well  said,  doubtless,"  remarked  Madame  de  Mainte- 
non ;  "  but,  pray,  who  among  our  young  ladies  knows  what 
divorce  is  ?  " 

245.  FENELON   AND  SAINT  CYR. — Michelet,  speaking  of 
Saint  Cyr,  which  he  does  not  love,  said  :  "Its  cold  governess 
was  much  more  a  man  than  Fe"nelon."     The  fact  is,  that  the 
author  of  the  Education  of  Girls  gives  a  larger  place  to  sen- 
sibility and  intelligence.     It  is  not  Madame  de  Maintenon 
who  said:  "  As  much  as  possible,  tenderness  of  heart  must 
be  excused  in  young  girls."    It  is  not  at  Saint  Cyr  that  these 
maxims  were  practised.     "Pray  let  them  have  Greek  and 
Roman  histories.     They  will  find  in  them  prodigies  of  cour- 
age and  disinterestedness.     Let  them  not  be  ignorant  of  the 
history  of  France,  which  also  has  its  beauty.  .  .  .     All  this 
serves  to  give  dignity  to  the  mind,  and  to  lift  the  soul  to 
noble    sentiments."       Nevertheless,    Fenelon's    work    was 
highly   esteemed  at-  Saint  Cyr.     It  appeared  in   1G87,  and 
Saint  Cyr  was  founded    in   1G86.      A  great  number  of  its 
precepts  were  there  observed,  such  as  the  following:  "  Fre- 
quent leaves  of  absence  should  be  avoided  ;  "  "  Young  girls 
should  not  be  accustomed  to  talk  much." 


230  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

246.  GENERAL  JUDGMENT.  —  In  a  word,  if  the  ideal  pro- 
posed to  the  young  women  of  Saint  Cyr  by  Madame  de 
Main  tenon  cannot  satisfy  those  who,  in  our  day,  conceive  "  an 
education  broader  in  its  scheme  and  more  liberal  in  its  spirit," 
at  least  we  must  do  justice  to  an  institution  which  was,  as 
its  foundress  said,  "  a  kind  of  college,"  a  first  attempt  at 
enfranchisement  in  the  education  of  women.  Without  de- 
manding of  Madame  de  Maintenon  what  was  not  in  her  age 
to  give,  let  us  be  inspired  by  her  in  what  concerns  the 
changeless  education  in  moral  virtues,  and  in  the  qualities 
of  discretion,  reserve,  goodness,  and  submission.  "  How- 
ever severe  that  education  may  appear,"  says  Lavallee,  "  I 
believe  it  will  suggest  better  reflections  to  those  who  observe 
the  way  in  which  women  are  educated  to-day,  and  the  results 
of  that  education  in  luxury  and  pleasure,  not  only  on  the 
fireside,  but  still  more  on  society  and  political  life,  and  on 
the  future  of  the  men  that  it  is  preparing  for  France.  I 
believe  they  will  prefer  that  manly  education,  so  to  speak, 
which  purified  private  morals  and  begot  public  virtues  ;  and 
that  they  will  esteem  and  regret  that  work  of  Madame  de 
Maintenon,  which  for  a  century  prevented  the  corruption  of 
the  Court  from  extending  to  the  provinces,  and  maintained 
in  the  old  counts-seats,  from  which  came  the  greater  part  of 
the  nobility,  the  substantial  virtues  and  the  simple  manners 
of  the  olden  time." 

[247.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. — 1.  The  education  of  women 
in  the  seventeenth  century  reflects  the  sentiment  of  the  age 
as  to  their  relative  position  in  society,  their  rights,  and 
their  destiny.  Woman  was  still  regarded  as  the  inferior  of 
man,  in  the  lower  classes  as  a  drudge,  in  the  higher  as  an 
ornament ;  in  her  case,  intellectual  culture  was  regarded  as 
either  useless  or  dangerous ;  and  the  education  that  was 


EDUCATION   OF   WOMEN.  231 

given  her  was  to  fit  her  for  a  life  of  devotion  or  a  life  of 
seclusion  from  society. 

2.  The  rules  of  Jacqueline  Pascal  exhibit  the  effects  of 
an  ascetic  belief  on  education, — human  nature  is  corrupt; 
all  its  likes  are  to  be  thwarted,  and  all  its  dislikes  fostered 
under  compulsion. 

3.  The  education  directed  by  Madame  de  Maintenon  is 
the  beginning  of  a  rupture  with  tradition.     It  was  a  move- 
ment towards  the  secularization  of  woman's  education,  and 
towards  the  recognition  of  her  equality  with  man,  with  re- 
spect to  her  grade  of  intellectual  endowments,  her  intellectual 
culture,  and  to  her  participation  in  the  duties  of  real  life. 

4.  The  type  of  the  higher  education  was  still  monastic, 
both  for  men  and  women.     No  one  was  able  to  conceive 
that  both   sexes   might  be  educated  together  with  mutual 
ad vantae. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

KOLLIN. 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  PARIS;  STATUTES  OF  1598  AND  OP  1600;  ORGANIZA- 
TION OF  THE  DIFFERENT  FACULTIES;  DECADENCE  OF  THE  UNIVEH.SITY 
OF  PARIS  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY;  THE  RESTORATION  OF 
STUDIES  AND  ROLL1N  (1661-1741);  THE  TREATISE  ON  STUDIES;  DIF- 
FERENT OPINIONS;  DIVISION  OF  THE  TREATISE  ON  STUDIES;  GENE- 
RAL REFLECTIONS  ON  EDUCATION  J  STUDIES  FOR  THE  FIRST  TEARS  ; 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIRLS  J  THE  STUDY  OF  FRENCH  J  GREEK  AND 
LATIN  ;  ROLLIN  THE  HISTORIAN  J  THE  TEACHING  OF  HISTORY  ; 
PHILOSOPHY  ;  SCIENTIFIC  INSTRUCTION  J  EDUCATIONAL  CHARACTER 
OF  ROLLIN'S  PEDAGOGY  ;  INTERIOR  DISCIPLINE  OF  COLLEGES  ; 
PUBLIC  EDUCATION  ;  THE  ROD  J  PUNISHMENTS  IN  GENERAL  J  CON- 
CLUSION J  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


248.  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  PARIS.  —  Since  the  thirteenth 
century,  the  University  of  Paris  had  been  a  centre  of  light 
and  a  resort  for  students.  Eamus  could  say:  "This  Uni- 
versity is  not  the  university  of  one  city  only,  but  of  the 
entire  world."  But  even  in  the  time  of  Ramus,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  civil  discords,  and  by  reason  also  of  the  prog- 
ress in  the  colleges  organized  by  the  Company  of  Jesus,  the 
University  of  Paris  declined  ;  she  saw  the  number  of  her 
pupils  diminish.  She  persisted,  however,  in  the  full  light  of 
the  Renaissance,  in  following  the  superannuated  regulations 
which  the  Cardinal  d'Estouteville  had  imposed  on  her  in  1452  ; 
she  fell  behind  in  the  routine  of  the  scholastic  methods.  A 
reform  was  necessary,  and  in  1600  it  was  accomplished  by 
Henry  TV. 


ROLLIN.  233 

249.  STATUTES  OF  1600. — The  statutes  of  the  new  uni- 
versity were  promulgated  "  by  the  order  and  the  will  of  the 
most   Christian    and   most   invincible   king  of   France    and 
Navarre,   Henry  IV."       This  was  the  first  time  that  the 
State  directly  intervened  in  the   control  of  education,  and 
that  secular  power  was  set  up  in  opposition  to  the  absolute 
authority  of  the  Church. 

In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  a  reform  had 
been  made  in  the  University,  bj-  the  Popes  Innocent  III.  and 
Urban  V.  The  reformer  of  1452,  the  Cardinal  d'Estouteville, 
acted  as  the  legate  of  the  pontifical  power.  On  the  contrary, 
the  statutes  of  1600  were  the  work  of  a  commission  named 
by  the  king,  and  there  sat  at  its  deliberations,  by  the  side  of 
a  few  ecclesiastics,  magistrates,  and  even  professors. 

250.  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  DIFFERENT  FACULTIES.  —  The 
University  of  Paris  comprised  four  Faculties  :  the  Faculties 
of  Theology,  of  Law,  and  of  Medicine,  which  corresponded 
to  what  we  to-day  call  superior  instruction,  and  the  Faculty 
of  Arts,  which  was  almost  the  equivalent  of  our  secondary 
instruction.1 

It  would  take  too  long  to  enumerate  in  this  place  the 
different  innovations  introduced  by  the  statutes  of  1600. 
Let  us  merely  say  a  word  of  the  Faculty  of  Arts. 

In  the  Faculty  of  Arts  the  door  was  finally  opened  to  the 
classical  authors.  In  a  certain  degree  the  tendencies  of  the 

1  "  Formerly  secondary  schools  were  schools  in  which  was  given  a  more 
advanced  instruction  then  in  the  primary  schools;  and  they  were  distin- 
guished into  communal  secondary  schools,  or  communal  colleges,  and  into 
private  secondary  schools  or  institutions.  .  .  .  To-day,  secondary  instruc- 
tion includes  the  colleges  and  lycees  in  which  are  taught  the  ancient  lan- 
guages, modern  languages,  history,  mathematics,  physics,  chemistry,  and 
philosophy.  Public  instruction  is  divided  into  primary,  secondary,  and 
superior  instruction."  —  LITTKE. 


234  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Renaissance  were  obeyed.  Nevertheless,  the  methods  and 
the  general  spirit  were  scarcely  changed.  Catholicism  was 
obligatory,  and  the  French  language  remained  under  ban. 
Frequent  exercises  in  repetition  and  declamation  were  main- 
tained. The  liberal  arts  were  always  considered  "  the 
foundation  of  all  the  sciences."  Instruction  in  philosophy 
was  always  reduced  to  the  interpretation  of  the  texts  of  Aris- 
totle. As  to  history,  and  the  sciences  in  general,  no  account 
whatever  was  taken  of  them. 

251.  DECADENCE  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY.  —  The  reform,  then,  was  insufficient,  and  the 
results  were  bad.  While  the  colleges  of  the  Jesuits 
attracted  pupils  in  crowds,  and  while  the  Oratorians  and 
the  Janseuists  reformed  secondary  instruction,  the  colleges 
of  the  University1  remained  mediocre  and  obscure.  Save 
in  rare  exceptions,  there  were  no  professors  of  distinc- 
tion ;  the  education  was  formal,  in  humble  imitation  of  that 
of  the  Company  of  Jesus ;  there  was  an  abuse  of  abstract 
rules,  of  grammatical  exercises,  of  written  tasks,  and  of 
Latin  composition  ;  there  was  no  disposition  to  take  an  ad- 
vance step  ;  but  an  obstinate  resistance  to  the  new  spirit, 
which  was  indicated  either  by  the  interdiction  of  the  philoso- 
ph}'  of  Descartes,  or  by  the  refusal  to  teach  in  the  French 
language ;  in  a  word,  there  was  complete  isolation  in  im- 

1  This  refers  to  the  University  of  Paris,  which  must  be  distinguished 
from  the  Napoleonic  University.  "The  latter  was  founded  by  a  decree  of 
Napoleon  I.,  March  17,  1808.  It  was  first  called  the  Imperial  University, 
and  then  the  University  of  France.  It  comprises:  1.  The  faculties;*  2.  the 
lyce'es  or  colleges  of  the  State;  3.  the  communal  colleges;  4.  the  primary 
schools.  All  these  are  under  the  direction  of  a  central  administration."  - 
LITTRS. 

*  There  are  now  five  Faculties  or  institutions  for  special  instruction.  — 
the  Faculties  of  the  Sciences,  of  Letters,  of  Medicine,  of  Law,  and  of  Theol- 
ogy. (P.) 


ROLLIN.  235 

movable  routine,  and  in  consequence,  decadence,  —  such  is  a 
summary  history  of  the  University  of  Paris  up  to  the  last 
quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

252.  THE  RESTORATION  OF  STUDIES  AND   ROLLIN    (1661- 
1741). — "We  must   go   forward  to   the   time   when   Rollin 
taught,  to  observe  a  revival  in  the  studies  of  the  University. 
Several  distinguished  professors,  as  his  master  Hersan,  Pour- 
chot,  and  still  others,  had  prepared  the  way  for  him.     There 
was   then,   from    1680   to    1700,    a   real   rejuvenescence   of 
studies,  which  was  initiated  in  part  by  Rollin. 

Latin  lost  a  little  ground  in  consequence  of  a  growing 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  French  language  and  the 
national  literature,  which  had  just  been  made  illustrious  by  so 
many  masterpieces.  The  spirit  of  the  Jansenist  methods 
penetrated  the  colleges  of  the  University.  The  Cartesian 
philosophy  was  taught  in  them,  and  a  little  more  attention 
was  given  to  the  explication  of  authors,  and  a  little  less  to 
the  verbal  repetition  of  lessons.  New  ideas  began  to  infil- 
trate into  the  old  citadel  of  scholasticism.  The  question 
came  to  be  asked  if  celibacy  was  indeed  an  indispensable 
condition  of  the  teaching  office.  Men  began  to  comprehend 
that  at  least  marriage  was  not  a  reason  for  exclusion. 
Finally,  real  progress  was  made  in  discipline  as  well  as  in 
methods,  and  the  indubitable  proof  of  this  is  the  Treatise  on 
Studies,  by  Rollin. 

253.  THE  TREATISE  ON  STUDIES.  —  Rollin  has  summed  up 
his  educational  experience,  an  experience  of  fifty  years,  in  a 
book  which  has  become  celebrated  under  the  title  of  Treatise 
on  /Studies.     The  full  title  of  this  work  was  :  De  la  maniere 
d'enseigner  et  d'etudier  les  belles-lettres  par  rapport  a  I'esprit 
et  au  cozur.     The  first  two  volumes  appeared  in  1726,  and 
the  other  two  in  1728. 


236  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

The  Treatise  on  Studies  is  not  like  the  Emile,  which  was 
published  twenty  years  later,  a  work  of  venturesome  inquiry 
and  original  novelties ;  but  is  a  faithful  exposition  of  the 
methods  in  use,  and  a  discreet  commentary  on  them.  While 
this  treatise  belongs  by  its  date  to  the  eighteenth  century,  it 
is  the  pedagogy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  University  under  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  that 
Rollin  has  collected,  and  of  which  he  has  simply  wjshed  to 
be  the  reporter.  In  the  Latin  dedication,  which  he  addresses 
to  the  Rector  of  the  University  of  Paris,  he  clearly  defines 
his  intentions  and  his  purpose  :  — 

"  My  first  design  was  to  put  in  writing  and  define  the 
method  of  teaching  which  has  long  been  in  use  among  you, 
and  which,  up  to  this  time,  has  been  transmitted  only  by 
word  of  mouth,  and  through  a  sort  of  tradition  ;  and  to  erect, 
so  far  as  I  am  able  to  do  it,  a  durable  monument  of  the 
rules  and  practice  which  you  have  followed  in  the  instruction 
of  youth,  for  the  purpose  of  preserving,  in  all  its  integrity, 
the  taste  for  belles-lettres,  and  to  preserve  it,  if  possible, 
from  the  injuries  and  the  alterations  of  time." 

254.  DIFFERENT  OPINIONS.  —  Rollin  has  always  had  warm 
admirers.  Voltaire  called  the  Treatise  a  book  "  forever 
useful,"  and  whatever  may  be  our  reservations  on  the  defi- 
ciences,  and  on  the  short  and  narrow  views  of  certain  parts 
of  the  pedagogy  of  Rollin,  we  must  subscribe  to  this  judg- 
ment. But  we  shall  not  go  so  far  as  to  accept  the  enthusi- 
astic declarations  of  Villemain,  who  complains  that  the  study 
of  the  Treatise  is  neglected  in  our  time,  "as  if  new  methods 
had  been  discovered  for  training  the  intelligence  and  the 
heart"  ;  and  he  adds,  "  Since  the  Treatise  on  Studies,  not  a 
forward  step  has  been  taken."  This  is  to  undervalue  all  the 
earnest  efforts  that  have  been  made  for  two  centuries  ,bv 


KOLLIN.  237 

educators  just  as  profound  as  was  the  ever  timid  and  cautious 
Ilollin.  When  we  compare  the  precepts  of  the  Treatise  with 
the  reforms  which  the  spirit  of  progress  has  already  effected, 
and  particularly  with  those  which  it  will  effect,  we  are 
astonished  to  hear  Nisard  say:  "In  educational  matters, 
the  Treatise  on  /Studies  is  the  unique  book,  or  better  still, 
the  book." 

To  put  such  a  burden  of  pompous  praise  on  Rollin-  is  to 
compromise  his  real  worth ;  and  without  ceasing  to  do 
justice  to  his  wise  and  judicious  spirit,  we  wish  to  employ 
more  discretion  in  our  admiration. 

255.  DIVISION  OF  THE  TREATISE  ON  STUDIES.  —  Before 
calling  attention  to  the  most  interesting  parts  of  the  Treatise 
on  /Studies,  let  us  briefly  state  the  object  of  the  eight  books 
of  which  it  is  composed. 

The  Treatise  opens  with  a  Preliminary  Discourse  which 
recites  the  advantages  of  instruction. 

The  title  of  the  first  book  is  :  Exercises  ivhich  are  proper 
for  very  young  children;  of  the  education  of  girls.  Rollin 
acknowledges  that  he  treats  only  very  superficially  "  this 
double  subject,"  which  is  foreign  to  his  original  plan.  In 
fact,  the  first  edition  of  his  Treatise  on  Studies  contained  but 
seven  books,  and  it  is  only  in  1734  that  he  wrote,  "at  the 
urgent  requests  and  prayers  of  several  persons,"  that  short 
essay  on  the  education  of  boys  and  girls  which  first  appeared 
under  the  form  of  a  supplement,  and  which  became  the  first 
book  of  the  work  only  in  the  subsequent  editions. 

The  different  subjects  proper  for  training  the  youth  in 
the  public  schools,  that  is,  in  the  colleges,  —  such  is  the 
object  of  the  six  books  which  follow  :  Book  II.  Of  the  learn- 
ing of  the  languages;  that  is,  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin ; 
Book  III.  Of  poetry;  Book  IV.  Of  rhetoric;  Book  V.  Of 


238  THE   HISTORY   OP   PEDAGOGY. 

the  three  kinds  of  eloquence;   Book  VI.   Of  history;   Book 
VJJ.   Of  philosophy. 

Book  Vlil.,  the  last,  entitled  Of  tlie  interior  government 
of  schools  and  colleges,  has  a  particular  character.  It  does 
not  treat  of  studies  and  intellectual  exercises,  but  of  disci- 
pline and  moral  education.  It  is,  on  all  accounts,  the  most 
original  and  interesting  part  of  Rollin's  work,  and  it  opens 
to  us  the  treasures  of  his  experience.  This  eighth  book  has 
been  justly  called  the  "  Memoirs  of  Rollin."  That  which 
constitutes  its  merit  and  its  charm  is  that  the  author  here  at 
last  decides  to  be  himself.  He  does  not  quote  the  ancients 
so  much ;  but  he  speaks  in  his  own  name,  and  relates  what 
he  has  done,  or  what  he  has  seen  done. 

256.  GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  EDUCATION. — There  is 
little  to  be  gathered  out  of  the  Preliminary  Discourse  of 
Rollin.  He  is  but  slightly  successful  in  general  reflections. 
When  he  ventures  to  philosophize,  Rollin  easily  falls  into 
platitudes.  He  has  a  dissertation  to  prove  that  "  study 
gives  the  mind  more  breadth  and  elevation ;  and  that  study 
gives  capacity  for  business." 

On  the  purpose  of  education,  Rollin,  who  copies  the 
moderns  when  he  does  not  translate  from  the  ancients,  is 
content  with  reproducing  the  preamble  of  the  regulations  of 
Henry  IV.,  which  assigned  to  studies  three  purposes :  learn- 
ing, morals  and  manners,  and  religion. 

"  The  happiness  of  kingdoms  and  peoples,  and  particularly 
of  a  Christian  State,  depends  on  the  good  education  of  the 
youth,  where  the  purpose  is  to  cultivate  and  to  polish,  by  the 
study  of  the  sciences,  the  intelligence,  still  rude,  of  the  young, 
and  thus  to  fit  them  for  filling  worthily  the  different  vocations 
to  which  they  are  destined,  without  which  they  will  be  useless 
to  the  State  ;  and  finally,  to  teach  them  the  sincere  religious 


ROLLIN.  239 

practices  which  God  requires  of  them,  the  inviolable  attach- 
ment they  owe  to  their  fathers  and  mothers  and  to  their 
country,  and  the  respect  and  obedience  which  they  are  bound 
to  render  princes  and  magistrates." 

257.  PRIMARY  STUDIES.  —  Rollin  is  original  when  he  in- 
troduces us  to  the  classes  of  the  great  colleges  where  he  has 
lived ;  but  is  much  less  so  when  he  speaks  to  us  of  little 
children,  whom  he  has  never  seen  near  at  hand.  He  has 
never  known  family  life,  and  scarcely  ever  visited  public 
schools  ;  and  it  is  through  his  recollections  of  Quintilian  that 
he  speaks  to  us  of  children. 

There  is,  then,  but  little  to  note  in  the  few  pages  that  he 
has  devoted  to  the  studies  of  the  first  years,  from  three  to 
six  or  seven. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  things  we  find  here,  perhaps, 
is  the  method  which  he  recommends  for  learning  to  read,  — 
"  the  typographic  cabinet  of  du  Mas."  "  It  is  a  novelt}*," 
sa^-s  the  wise  Rolliu,  "  and  it  is  quite  common  and  natural 
that  we  should  be  suspicious  of  this  word  novelty."  But 
after  the  examination,  he  decides  in  favor  of  the  system  in 
question,  which  consists  in  making  of  instruction  in  reading, 
something  analogous  to  the  work  of  an  apprentice  who  is 
learning  to  print.  The  pupil  has  before  him  a  table,  and  on 
this  table  is  placed  a  set  of  pigeon-holes,  "  logettes,"  which 
contain  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  printed  on  cards.  The 
pupil  is  to  arrange  on  the  table  the  different  letters  needed  to 
construct  the  words  required  of  him.  The  reasons  that 
Rollin  gives  for  recommending  this  method,  successful  tests 
of  which  he  had  seen  made,  prove  that  he  had  taken  into 
account  the  nature  of  the  child  and  his  need  of  activity :  — 

"This  method  of  learning  to  read,  besides  several  other 
advantages,  has  one  which  seems  to  me  very  considerable, — 


240  THE    HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

it  is  that  of  being  amusing  and  agreeable,  and  of  not  having 
the  appearance  of  study.  Nothing  is  more  wearisome  or 
tedious  in  infancy  than  severe  mental  effort  while  the  body 
is  in  a  state  of  repose.  With  this  device,  the  mind  of  the 
child  is  not  wearied.  He  need  not  make  a  painful  effort  at 
recollection,  because  the  distinction  and  the  name  of  the 
boxes  strike  his  senses.  He  is  not  constrained  to  a  posture 
that  is  oppressive  by  being  always  tied  to  the  place  where  he 
is  made  to  read.  There  is  free  activity  for  eyes,  hands,  and 
feet.  The  child  looks  for  his  letters,  takes  them  out, 
arranges  them,  overturns  them,  separates  them,  and  finally 
replaces  them  in  their  boxes.  This  movement  is  very  much 
to  his  taste,  and  is  exactly  adapted  to  the  active  and  restless 
disposition  of  that  age." 

Rollin  seems  really  to  believe  that  there  "is  no  danger  in 
beginning  with  the  reading  of  Latin."  However,  "  for  the 
schools  of  the  poor,  and  for  those  in  the  country,  it  is 
better,"  he  says,  "to  fall  in  with  the  opinion  of  those  who 
believe  that  it  is  necessary  to  begin  with  the  reading  of 
French." 

It  may  be  thought  that  Rollin  puts  a  little  too  much  into 
the  first  years  of  the  child's  course  of  study.  Before  the 
age  of  six  or  seven  he  ought  to  have  learned  to  read,  to 
write,  to  be  nourished  on  the  Historical  Catechism  of  Fleury, 
to  know  some  of  the  fables  of  La  Fontaine  by  heart,  and  to 
have  studied  French  grammar,  and  geography.  At  least, 
Rollin  requires  that  "  no  thought,  no  expression,  which  is 
within  the  child's  range,"  shall  be  allowed  to  be  passed  by. 
He  requires  that  the  teacher  speak  little,  and  that  he  make 
|  the  child  speak  much,  "  which  is  one  of  the  most  essential 
duties  and  one  of  those  that  are  the  least  practised."  He 
demands,  above  all  else,  clearness  of  statement,  and  com- 
mends the  use  of  illustrations  and  pictures  in  reading  books. 


ROLLIN.  241 

"The}'  are  very  suitable,"  he  says,  "  for  striking  the  atten- 
tion of  children,  and  for  fixing  their  memory  ;  this  is  prop- 
erly the  writing  of  the  ignorant." 

258.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  GIKLS.  —  The  same  reasons  ex- 
plain the  shortcomings  of  Rollin's  views  on  the  education  of 
women,  and  the  relative  mediocritj-  of  his  ideas  on  the  edu- 
cation of  children.  Living  in  solitude  and  in  the  celibate 
state,  he  had  no  personal  information  on  these  subjects,  and 
so  he  goes  back  to  Fenelon  for  his  ideas  on  the  education  of 
women,  and  to  Quintilian  in  the  case  of  children. 

Is  the  study  of  Latin  fit  for  girls?  Such  is  the  first  ques- 
tion which  he  raises ;  but  he  has  the  wisdom  to  answer  it  in 
the  negative,  save  for  "  nuns,  and  also  for  Christian  virgins 
and  widows."  "There  is  no  difference  in  minds,"  Rcllin 
emphatically  says,  "  that  is  due  to  sex."  But  he  does  not 
extend  the  consequences  of  this  excellent  principle  very  far. 

1  Save  once,  Rollin  has  scarcely  made  an  allusion  to  primary  instruc- 
tion proper.  We  quote  this  passage  on  account  of  its  singularity:  "  Several 
years  ago  there  was  introduced  into  most  of  the  schools  for  the  poor  in 
Paris  a  method  which  is  very  useful  .to  scholars,  and  which  spares  much 
trouble  to  the  teachers.  The  school  is  divided  into  several  classes.  I 
select  only  one  of  them,  that  composed  of  children  who  already  know  how 
to  write  syllables  ;  the  others  must  be  judged  by  this  one.  I  suppose  that 
the  subject  of  the  reading  lesson  is  Dixit  Dominus  Domino  meo :  Sede  a 
dextris  meis.  Each  child  pronounces  one  syllable,  as  Di.  His  competitor, 
who  stands  opposite,  takes  up  the  next,  zit,  and  so  on.  The  whole  class  is 
attentive  ;  for  the  teacher,  without  warning,  passes  at  once  from  the  head 
of  the  line  to  the  middle,  or  to  the  foot,  and  the  recitation  must  continue 
without  interruption.  If  a  pupil  makes  a  mistake  in  some  syllable,  the 
teacher,  without  speaking,  raps  upon  the  table  with  his  stick,  and  the  com- 
petitor is  obliged  to  repeat  as  it  should  be  the  syllable  that  has  been 
wrongly  pronounced.  If  he  fail  also,  the  next,  upon  a  second  rap  of  the 
stick,  goes  back  to  the  same  syllable,  and  so  on  till  it  has  been  pronounced 
correctly.  More  than  thirty  years  ago.  I  saw  with  unusual  pleasure  this 
method  in  successful  operation  at  Orleans,  where  it  originated  through  the 
care  and  industry  of  M.  Garot,  who  presided  over  the  schools  of  that 
city." 


242  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

He  is  content  to  require  of  women  the  four  rules  of  arith- 
metic ;  orthography,  in  which  he  is  not  over  exacting,  for 
"  their  ignorance  of  orthography  should  not  be  imputed  to 
them  as  a  crime,  since  it  is  almost  universal  in  their  sex  ;  " 
ancient  history  and  the  history  of  France,  "  which  it  is  dis- 
graceful to  every  good  Frenchman  not  to  know."1  As  to 
reading,  Rollin  is  quite  as  severe  as  Madame  de  Maintenon  : 
"  The  reading  of  comedies  and  tragedies  may  be  very  dan- 
gerous for  young  ladies."  He  sanctions  only  Esther  and 
Athalie.  Music  and  dancing  are  allowed,  but  without  enthu- 
siasm and  with  endless  precautions  :  — 

"  An  almost  universal  experience  shows  that  the  study  of 
music  is  an  extraordinary  dissipation." 

"  I  do  not  know  how  the  custom  of  having  girls  learn  to 
sing  and  play  on  instruments  at  such  great  expense  has 
become  so  common.  ...  I  hear  it  said  that  as  soon  as  they 
enter  on  life's  duties,  they  make  no  farther  use  of  it." 

259.  THE  STUDY  OF  FRENCH.  —  Rollin  is  chiefly  preoccu- 
pied with  the  study  of  the  ancient  languages ;  but  he  has  the 
merit,  notwithstanding  his  predilection  for  exercises  in  Latin, 
of  having  followed  the  example  of  the  Jansenists  so  far  as 
the  importance  accorded  to  the  French  language  is  con- 
cerned. 

"  It  is  a  disgrace,"  he  says,  "  that  we  are  ignorant  of  our 
own  language  ;  and  if  we  are  willing  to  confess  the  truth,  we 
will  almost  all  acknowledge  that  we  have  never  studied  it." 

Rollin  admitted  that  he  was  "  much  more  proficient  in  the 
study  of  Latin  than  in  that  of  French."  In  the  opening  of 
his  Treatise,  which  he  wrote  in  French  only  that  he  might 
place  himself  within  the  reach  of  his  young  readers  and  their 
parents,  he  excuses  himself  for  making  a  trial  in  a  kind  of 

1  Rollin  does  not  require  it,  however,  of  young  men. 


ROLLIN.  243 

writing  which  is  almost  new  to  him.  And  in  congratulating 
him  on  his  work,  d'Aguesseau  wrote,  "You  speak  French 
as  if  it  were  3-our  native  tongue."  Such  was  the  Rector  of 
the  University  in  France  at  the  commencement  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Let  us  think  well  of  him,  therefore,  for  having  so  over- 
come his  own  habits  of  mind  as  to  recommend  the  study  of 
French.  He  would  have  it  learned,  not  only  through  use, 
but  also  "  through  principles,"  and  would  have  "  the  genius 
of  the  language  understood",  and  all  its  beauties  studied." 

Rollin  has  a  high  opinion  of  grammar,  but  would  not 
encourage  a  misuse  of  it :  — 

"  Long-continued  lessons  on  such  dry  matter  might  be- 
come very  tedious  to  pupils.  Short  questions,  regularly 
proposed  each  day  after  the  manner  of  an  ordinary  conversa- 
tion, in  which  they  themselves  would  be  consulted,  and  in 
which  the  teacher  would  employ  the  art  of  having  them  tell 
what  he  wished  to  make  them  learn,  would  teach  them  in  the 
way  of  amusement,  and,  by  an  insensible  progress,  con- 
tinued for  several  years,  the}'  would  acquire  a  profound 
knowledge  of  the  language." 

It  is  in  the  Treatise  on  Studies  that  we  find  for  the  first 
time  a  formal  list  of  classical  French  authors.  Some  of 
these  are  now  obscure  and  forgotten,  as  the  Remarkable 
Lives  written  by  Marsolier,  and  the  History  of  the  Academy 
of  Inscriptions  and  Belles- Lettres,  by  de  Boze  ;  but  the  most 
of  them  have  held  their  place  in  our  programmes,  and  the 
judgments  of  Rollin  have  been  followed  for  two  centuries,  on 
the  Discourse  on  Universal  History,  by  Bossuet,  on  the  works 
of  Boilean  and  Racine,  and  on  the  Logic  of  Port  Royal. 

Like  all  his  contemporaries,  Rollin  particularly  recom- 
mends Latin  composition  to  his  pupils.  However,  he  has 
spoken  a  word  for  French  composition,  which  should  bear, 


244  THE    HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

first,  on  fables  and  historical  narratives,  then  on  exercises  in 
epistolary  style,  and  finally,  on  common  things,  descriptions, 
and  short  speeches. 

260.  GREEK  AND  LATIN.  —  But  it  is  in  the  teaching  of 
the  ancient  languages  that  Rollin  has  especially  tried  the 
resources  of  his  pedagogic  art.  For  two  centuries,  in  the 
colleges  of  the  University,  his  recommendations  have  been 
followed.  In  Greek,  he  censures  the  stud}'  of  themes,  and 
reduces  the  stud}*  of  this  language  to  the  understanding  of 
authors.  More  of  a  Latinist  than  of  a  Hellenist,  of  all  the 
arguments  he  offers  to  justify  the  study  of  Greek,  the  best 
is,  that,  since  the  Renaissance,  Greek  has  always  been 
taught ;  but,  without  great  success,  he  admits  :  — 

"  Parents,"  he  says,  "  are  but  little  inclined  in  favor  of 
Greek.  They  also  learned  Greek,  they  claim,  in  their  youth, 
and  they  have  retained  nothing  of  it ;  this  is  the  ordinary 
language  which  indicates  that  one  has  not  forgotten  much  of 
it." 

But  Latin,  which  it  does  not  suffice  to  learn  to  read,  but 
which  must  be  written  and  spoken,  is  the  object  of  all 
Ilollin's  care,  who,  on  this  point,  gives  proof  of  consummate 
experience.  Like  the  teachers  of  Port  Royal,  he  demands 
that  there  shall  be  no  abuse  of  themes  in  the  lower  classes, 
and  recommends  the  use  of  oral  themes,  but  he  holds  firmly 
to  version,  and  to  the  explication  of  authors  :  — 

"  Authors  are  like  a  living  dictionary,  and  a  speaking 
grammar,  whereby  we  learn,  through  experience,  the  very 
force  and  the  true  use  of  words,  of  phrases,  and  of  the  rules 
of  syntax." 

This  is  not  the  place  to  analyze  the  parts  of  the  Treatise 
on  Studies  which  relate  to  poetics  and  rhetoric,  and  which 
are  the  code,  now  somewhat  antiquated,  of  Latin  verse  and 
prose.  Rollin  brings  to  bear  on  this  theme  great  professional 


ROLLIN.  245 

sagacity,  but  also  a  spirit  of  narrowness.  He  condemns 
ancient  mythology,  and  excludes,  as  dangerous,  the  French 
poets,  save  some  rare  exceptions.  He.  claims  that  the  true 
use  of  poetry  belongs  to  religion.  He  has  no  conception  of 
the  salutary  and  wholesome  influence  which  the  beauties  of 
poetry  and  eloquence  can  exercise  over  the  spirit. 

261.  ROLLIN  THE  HISTORIAN.  —  Rollin  has  made  a  reputa- 
tion as  an  historian.  Frederick  II.  compares  him  to  Thucy- 
dides,  and  Chateaubriand  has  emphatically  called  him  the 
"  F6uelon  of  History."  Montesquieu  himself  has  pleasantly 
said:  "  A  noble  man  has  enchanted  the  public  through  his 
works  on  history  ;  it  is  heart  which  speaks  to  heart ;  we  feel 
a  secret  satisfaction  in  hearing  virtue  speak  ;  he  is  the  bee  of 
France." 

Modern  criticism  has  dealt  justly  with  these  exaggerations. 
The  thirteen  volumes  of  his  Ancient  History,  which  Rollin 
published,  from  1730  to  1738,  are  scarcely  read  to-day.  His 
great  defect  as  an  historian  is  his  lack  of  erudition  and  of 
the  critical  spirit ;  he  accepts  with  credulity  every  fable  and 
every  legend. 

We  are  to  recollect,  however,  that  as  professor  of  history 
—  and  in  truth  he  pretended  to  be  only  this  —  Rollin  has 
greater  worth  than  as  an  historian.  He  knew  how  to  intro- 
duce into  the  exposition  of  facts  great  simplicity  and  great 
facility.  And  especially  he  attempted  to  draw  from  events 
their  moral  lesson.  "  We  ought  not  to  forget,"  says  a 
German  of  our  time,  "  that  Rollin  has  never  made  any 
personal  claim  to  be  considered  an  investigator  in  historical 
study,  but  that  the  purpose  he  had  chiefly  in  view  was  educa- 
tional. As  he  was  the  first  to  introduce  the  study  of  history 
into  French  colleges  (this  is  true  only  of  the  colleges  of 
the  University),  he  sought  to  remedy  the  complete  absence 
of  historical  reading  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  young. 


246  THE   HISTOBY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

This  is  a  great  educational  feat ;  for  it  is  undeniable  that  his 
works  are  of  a  nature  to  give  to  the  young  of  all  nations  a 
real  taste  for  the  study  of  history,  and  at  the  same  time 
a  vivid  conception  of  the  different  epochs,  and  of  the  life  of 
nations."  l 

262.  THE  TEACHING  OF  HISTORY.  —  However,  considered 
simply  as  a  professor  of  history,  Rollin  is  far  from  being 
irreproachable.  Doubtless  it  is  good  to  moralize  on  history, 
and  to  make  of  it,  as  he  says,  "  a  school  of  enduring  glory 
and  real  grandeur."  But  is  not  historical  accuracy  neces- 
sarily compromised,  and  is  there  not  danger  of  making  the 
subject  puerile,  when  the  teacher  is  guided  exclusively  by 
the  idea  of  moral  edification  ? 

Another  graver  fault  in  Rollin  is  that  he  systematically 
omits  the  history  of  France,  and  with  it,  all  modern  histoiy. 
In  this  respect,  he  falls  below  the  Oratory,  Port  Royal, 
Bossuet,  F^uelon,  and  Madame  de  Maintenon.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  observe,  moreover,  that  Rollin  recognizes  the  utility 
of  the  study  of  national  history,  but  his  excuse  for  omitting 
it  is  the  lack  of  time  :  — 

"  I  do  not  speak  of  the  history  of  France.  ...  I  do  not 
think  it  possible  to  find  time,  during  the  regular  course  of 
instruction,  to  make  a  place  for  this  study;  but  I  am  far 
from  considering  it  as  of  no  importance,  and  I  observe  with 
regret  that  it  is  neglected  by  many  persons  to  whom,  never- 
theless, it  would  be  very  useful,  not  to  sa}-  necessary. 
When  I  say  this,  it  is  myself  that  I  criticise  first,  for  I 
acknowledge  that  I  have  not  given  sufficient  attention  to  it, 
and  I  am  ashamed  of  being  in  some  sort  a  stranger  in  my 
own  country  after  having  traversed  so  many  others." 

1  Doctor  Wolker,  quoted  by  Cadet,  in  his  edition  of  Rollin,  Paris,  1882. 


KOLLIN.  247 

263.  PHILOSOPHY.  —  It   is  moral  edification   that  Rollin 
seeks  in  philosophical  studies,  as  in  historical  studies.     With 
but  little  competence  in  these  matters,  he  admits  that  he  has 
applied    himself    only   very   superficially   to    the    study   of 
philosoph}'.     He  knows,  however,  the  value  of  ethics  and 
logic,  which  govern  the  morals  and  perfect  the  mind ,-  of 
physics,  which  furnishes  us  a  mass  of    interesting  knowl- 
edge ;  and  finally,  of  metaph}Tsics,  which  fortifies  the  religious 
sentiment.     The  ethics  of  antiquity  seems  to  him  worthy  of 
attention ;    it  is,  in  his  view,  the  introduction  to  Christian 
ethics. 

264.  SCIENTIFIC  INSTRUCTION. — Rollin  has  given  us  a  com- 
pendium of  astronomy,  of  physics,  and  of  natural  history. 
Without    doubt    his    essays    have   but   a    moderate    value. 
Rolliu's  knowledge  is  often  inexact,  and  his  general  ideas 
are  narrow.     He  is  capable  of  believing  that  "  nature  entire 
is  made  for  man."     But  yet  he  deserves  some  credit  for  hav- 
ing comprehended  the  part  that  the  observation  of  the  sensi- 
ble world  ought  to  play  in  education  :  — 

' '  I  call  children's  physics  a  study  of  nature  which  requires 
scarcely  anything  but  eyes,  and  which;  for  this  reason,  is 
within  the  reach  of  all  sorts  of  persons,  and  even  of  children. 
It  consists  in  making  ourselves  attentive  to  the  objects  which 
nature  presents  to  us,  to  consider  them  with  care,  and  to 
admire  their  different  beauties  ;  but  without  searching  into 
their  secret  causes,  which  comes  within  the  province  of  the 
physics  of  the  scientist. 

"  I  say  that  even  children  are  capable  of  this,  for  they  have 
eyes,  and  are  not  wanting  in  curiosity.  They  wish  to  know  ; 
they  are  inquisitive.  It  is  only  necessary  to  awaken  and 
nourish  in  them  the  desire  to  learn  and  to  know,  which  is 
natural  to  all  men.  This  study,  moreover,  if  it  may  be  so 


248  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

called,  far  from  being  painful  and  tedions,  affords  only 
pleasure  and  amusement ;  it  may  take  the  place  of  recrea- 
tion,  and  ordinarily  ought  not  to  take  place  save  in  playing. 
It  is  inconceivable  how  much  knowledge  of  things  children 
might  gain,  if  we  knew  how  to  take  advantage  of  nil  the 
occ'asions  which  they  furnish  for  the  purpose." 

265.  THE  EDUCATIVE  CHARACTER  OF  ROLLIX'S  PEDAGOGY. 
—  It  should  not  be  supposed  that  Rollin's  exclusive  purpose 

was  to  make  Latinists  and  literary  men.  I  know  very  well 
that  he  himself  has  said  that  "  to  form  the  taste  was  his 
principal  aim."  Nevertheless,  he  has  thought  of  other 
things,  —  moral  qualities  not  less  than  intellectual  endow- 
ments. He  wished  to  train  at  once  "the  heart  and  the 
intellect."  With  him,  instruction  in  all  its  phases  takes  an 
educative  turn.  He  esteems  knowledge  only  because  it  leads 
to  virtue.  In  the  explication  of  authors,  attention  should  be 
directed  to  the  morality  of  their  thoughts,  at  least  as  much 
as  to  their  literary  beauty.  The  maxims  and  examples  which 
their  writings  contain  should  be  skillfully  put  in  relief.  s-o 
that  these  readings  may  become  moral  lessons  not  less  than 
studies  in  rhetoric.  To  sum  up  in  a  word,  Rolliu  follows  the 
tradition  of  the  Jansenists,  and  uot  that  of  the  Company  of 
Jesus. 

266.  CHRISTIANITY   OF   ROLLIN.  —  Rollin,   though   perse- 
cuted for  his  Jansenist  tendencies,  was  a  fervent  Christian. 
k- A  Roman  probity"  did  not  suffice  for  him;  he  desired  a 
Christian  virtue.     Consequently,  he  requires  that  religious 
instruction  should  form  a  part  of  every  lesson.     A  regulation 
which  dates  from  his  rectorship  required  that  the  scholar  in 
each  class  should  learn  and  recite  each  day  one  or  more 
maxims  drawn  from  the  Holy  Scriptures.     This  custom  lias 
been  maintained  to  this  day.     Rollin  knew,  moreover,  that 


ROLLIN. 

the  best  means  of  inspiring  piety  is  to  preach  by  example, 
and  to  be  pious  one's  self  :  — 

"  *f  To  make  true  Christians,  — -  this  is  the  end  and  purpose  of 
the  education  of  children  ;  all  the  rest  but  fulfills  the  pur- 
pose of  means.  .  .  .  When  a  teacher  has  received  this  spirit, 
there  is  nothing  more  to  say  to  him.  .  .  ."""  \{..<T£( 

The  religious  spirit  of  Rollin  comes  to  view  on  each  page 
of  his  book  :  — 

"  It  remains  for  me,"  he  says,  in  concluding  his  preface, 
"  to  pray  God,  in  whose  hands  we  all  are,  we  and  our  dis- 
courses, to  deign  to  bless  my  good  intentions." 

267.  INTERIOR  DISCIPLINE  OF  THE  COLLEGES. — The  part 
of  the   Treatise  on  Studies  which  has  preserved  the  most 
interest,  and  which  will  be  studied  with  the  most  profit,  is 
certainly  that  which  treats   of   the   interior  government   of 
schools  and  colleges.     Here,  though  he  does  not  completely 
divest  himself  of  his  method  of  borrowings,  and  references 
to  the  authority  of  others,  and  though  he  is  especially  under 
the  influence  of  Locke,  whose  wise  advice  on  rewards  and 
punishments  he  reproduces  almost  verbatim,  Rollin  makes 
use  of  a  long  personal  experience.     We  have  charged  him 
with  not  knowing  the  little  child.     On  the  other  hand,  he 
knows  exactly  what  scholars  a  little  older  are,  —  children 
from   ten    to  sixteen   years  old.     And  he  not  only  knows 
them,  but  he  loves  them  tenderly.     He  gives  them  this  testi- 
mony, which  affection  alone  can  explain,  that  he  has  always 
found  them  reasonable. 

268.  ENUMERATION   OF  THE  QUESTIONS  TREATED   BY  ROL- 
LIN. —  To  give  an  idea  of  this  part  of  the  Treatise,  the  best 
way  is  to  reproduce  the  titles  of  the  thirteen  articles  com- 
posing the  chapter  entitled  General  Counsels  on  the  Educa- 
tion of  the  Young: — 


250  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

I.  What  end  should  be  proposed  in  education  ?  II.  How 
to  study  the  character  of  children  in  order  to  become  able  to 
instruct  them  properly.  III.  How  at  once  to  gain  authority 
over  children.  IV.  How  to  become  loved  and  feared. 
V.  Punishments:  1.  Difficulties  and  dangers  in  punish- 
ments ;  '2.  Rules  to  be  observed  in  punishments.  VI.  Rep- 
rimands :  1.  Occasion  for  reprimanding;  2.  Time  for 
making  the  reprimand  ;  3.  Manner  of  reprimanding.  VII. 
Reasoning  with  children.  Stimulating  them  with  the  sense 
of  honor.  Making  use  of  commendation,  rewards,  and 
caresses.  VIII.  How  to  train  children  to  be  truthful. 
IX.  How  to  train  children  to  politeness,  to  cleanliness,  and 
to  exactness.  X.  How  to  make  study  attractive.  XI.  How 
to  give  rest  and  recreation  to  children.  XII.  How  to  train 
the  young  to  goodness  by  instruction  and  example.  XIII. 
Piety,  religion,  zeal  for  the  salvation  of  children. 

269.  PUBLIC  EDUCATION.  —  Rollin  does  not  definitely  ex- 
press himself  on  the  superiority  of  public  education.     He 
does  not  dare  give  formal  advice  to  parents ;  but  he  brings 
forward  the  advantages  of  the  common  life  of-  colleges  with 
so  much  force,  that  it  is  very  evident  that  he  prefers  it  to 
a   private   education.     Let   it   be   noted,    besides,    that   he 
accepts   on   his   own   account   "  the  capital  maxim  of  the 
ancients,  that  children  belong  more  to  the  State  than   to 
their  parents." 

270.  THE   ROD.  —  In   the   matter    of    discipline,    Rollin 
leans  rather  to  the  side  of  mildness.     However,  he  does  not 
dare  pronounce  himself  absolutely  against  the  use  of  the  rod. 
That  which  in  particular  causes  him  to  hesitate,  which  gives 
him  scruples,  which  prevents  him  from  expressing  a  censure 
which  is  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  but  which  never  rises  to 
his  lips,  is  that  there  are  certain  texts  of  the  Bible  whose 


ROLLIN.  251 

interpretation  is  favorable  to  the  use  of  the  rod.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  notice  how,  in  a  strait  between  his  sentiments  as  a 
docile  Christian  and  his  instincts  towards  mildness,  the  good 
and  timid  Rolliu  tries  to  find  a  less  rigorous  meaning  in  the 
sacred  text,  and  to  convince  himself  that  the  Bible  does  not 
say  what  it  seems  to  say.  After  many  hesitations,  he  finally 
comes  to  the  conclusion  that  corporal  chastisements  are  per- 
mitted, but  that  they  are  not  to  be  employed  save  in  ex- 
treme and  desperate  cases ;  and  this  is  also  the  conclusion 
of  Locke. 

271.  PUNISHMENTS   IN   GENERAL.  —  But   how   many   wise 
counsels  on  punishments,  and  on  the  precautions  that  must 
be  taken  when  we  punish  or  reprimand  !     One  should  refrain 
from  punishing  a  child  at  the  moment  he  commits  his  fault, 
because  this  might  then  exasperate  him  and  provoke  him  to 
new  breaches  of   duty.     Let  the  master  be    cool  when   he 
punishes,  and  avoid  the  anger  which  discredits  his  authority. 
The  whole  of  this  excellent  code  of  scholastic  discipline  might 
be  quoted  with  profit.     Rollin  is  reason  and  good  sense  itself 
when  he  guides  and  instructs  the  teacher  as  to  his  relations 
with  the  pupil.    Doubtless  the  most  of  these  precepts  are  not 
new  ;  but  when  they  come  from  the  mouth  of  Rollin,  there 
is  something  added  to  them  which  I  cannot  describe,  but 
which  gives  to  the  most  threadbare  advice  the  authority  of 
personal  experience. 

272.  CONCLUSION.  —  We    shall    not    dwell   on   the   other 
precepts  of    Rollin.     The  text  must  be  consulted  for   his 
reflections  on  plays,  recreations,  the  means  of  making  study 
attractive,  and  on  the  necessity  of  appealing  to  the  child's 
reason  betimes,  and  of  explaining  to  him  why  one  does  this 
or  that.     In  this  last  part  of  the  Treatise  on  Studies  there  is 
a   complete    infant  psychology   which  is  lacking,  neither  in 


252  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

keenness  nor  in  penetration.  In  particular,  there  is  a  code 
of  moral  discipline  which  cannot  be  too  highly  commended 
to  educators,  and  to  all  those  who  desire,  in  the  words  of 
Rollin,  "to  train  at  once  the  heart  and  the  mind"  of  the 
young.  Rollin  has  worked  for  virtue  even  more  than  for 
science.  His  works  are  less  literary  productions  than  works 
on  morals,  and  the  author  himself  is  the  perfect  expression 
of  what  can  be  done  for  the  education  of  the  young  by  the 
Christian  spirit  allied  to  the  universitj'  spirit. 

[273.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  characteristic  fact 
disclosed  by  this  study  is  the  very  slow  rate  at  which  prog- 
ress in  education  takes  place.  There  is  also  an  enforce- 
ment of  the  lesson  which  has  reappeared  from  time  to  time, 
that  education  follows  in  the  wake  of  new  and  general 
movements  in  human  thought. 

2.  A  more  specific  fact  is  the  extreme  conservatism  of 
universities,  or  the  tenacity  with  which  they  hold  to  tradi- 
tions.    The   question   is    suggested  whether,   after  all,  the 
conservative  habit  of  the  university  does  not  best  befit  its 
judicial  functions. 

3.  In  the  elbowing  of  the  classics  by  history  and  French, 
we  sec  the  rise  of  innovations  which  have  become  embodied 
iu  the  modern  university. 

4.  A  new  factor  in  the  higher  education  is  the  interven- 
tion of  the  State,  as  opposed  to  the  historical  domination  of 
the  Church.     In  the  reform  of  the  University  of  Paris  the 
State  became  an  educator. 

5.  There  is  evidence  of  some  progress  in  the  historical 
struggle   towards   the   conception    that   woman    has    equal 
rights  with  man  in  the  benefits  of  education.] 


CHAPTER   XII. 

CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.  —  LA  SALLE 
AND  THE  BRETHREN  OP  THE  CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS. 

STATE  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  ; 
DEMIA  AND  THE  INFANT  SCHOOLS  OF  LYONS;  CLAUDE  JOLY, 
DIRECTOR  OF  THE  PRIMARY  SCHOOLS  OF  PARIS;  THE  BOOK  OF 
THE  PARISH  SCHOOL;  LA  SALLE  (1651-1719)  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 

SCHOOLS;  LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  LA  SALLE;  ASCETIC  TEN- 
DENCIES; FOUNDATION  OF  THE  INSTITUTE  OF  THE  BRETHREN 
(1684)  J  THE  IDEA  OF  NORMAL  SCHOOLS ;  THE  IDEA  OF  GRATUITOUS 
AND  COMPULSORY  INSTRUCTION;  PROFESSIONAL  INSTRUCTION; 
CONDUCT  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS;  SUCCESSIVE  EDITIONS; 
ABUSE  OF  SCHOOL  REGULATIONS;  DIVISION  OF  THE  CONDUCT; 
INTERIOR  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOLS;  SIMULTANEOUS  IN- 
STRUCTION ;  WHAT  WAS  LEARNED  IN  THE  CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS  ', 
METHOD  OF  TEACHING  ;  THE  CHRISTIAN  CIVILITY  J  CORPORAL 
CHASTISEMENTS;  REPRIMANDS;  PENANCES;  THE  FERULE;  THE 
ROD  ;  REWARDS  ;  MUTUAL  ESPIONAGE  J  GENERAL  CONCLUSION  ; 
ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


274.  THE  STATE  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SEVEN- 
TKKNTH  CENTURY.  —  It  does  not  form  a  part  of  our  plan  to 
follow  from  day  to  day  the  small  increments  of  progress  and 
the  slow  development  of  the  primary  schools  of  France  ; 
but  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  the  essential  facts  and  to 
the  important  dates. 

The  Catholic  Church,  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  did  not  altogether  renounce  her  interest  in  popu- 
lar instruction.  She  took  measures,  without  doubt,  to  evan- 
gelize the  poor  people,  and  sometimes  "  even  to  teach  them 


254  THE   HISTOltY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

how  to  read  and  write."  Nevertheless,  up  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Christian  schools,  by  La  Salle,  no  serious  effort 
was  made.  Some  religious  foundations  establish  gratuitous 
schools  in  many  places,  —  charity  schools,  —  but  no  compre- 
hensive purpose  directs  these  establishments.  Conflicts  of 
prerogative  among  certain  independent  colleagues,  as  that 
between  the  writing-masters  and  the  masters  of  the  infant 
schools  placed  under  the  direct  authority  of  the  precentor,  or 
among  the  rectors  and  the  tutors  (ecoldtres) ,  that  is,  the 
assistants  of  the  bishops  charged  with  the  supervision  of  the 
schools,  —  such  dissensions  came  still  further  to  defeat  the 
good  intentions  of  individuals,  and  to  embarrass  the  feeble 
movement  that  was  exerted  in  favor  of  popular  instruction. 
For  example,  towards  1680,  the  writing-masters  attempted 
to  prevent  the  masters  of  the  primary  schools  1  from  giving 
writing  lessons,  at  least,  from  giving  their  pupils  any  copies 
except  monosyllables;  and  a  decree  of  Parliament  is  neces- 
sary to  re-establish  the  libert}7  —  and  then  under  certain 
restrictions  —  of  teaching  to  write. 

"  Christian  instruction  was  neglected,  not  to  say  dishon- 
ored," is  the  statement  of  contemporaries.  The  children 
who  attended  the  schools  of  the  poor  were  subjected  to  pub- 
lic contempt.  They  were  obliged  to  wear  on  their  caps  a 
distinctive  badge.  In  brief,  far  from  progressing,  primary 
instruction  was  rather  in  a  state  of  decadence. 

275.   DEMI  A   AND  THE   PRIMARY   SCHOOLS   OF    LYONS.  — 
Among   the    progressive   men   who   struggled   against   this 
unhappy   state   of   affairs,  and    who   tried   to   develop   the 
Catholic  schools,  we  must  mention,. before  La  Salle,  De"mia, 

1  Petites  Scales.  This  is  the  terra  commonly  applied  to  primary  schools 
at  this  period.  By  the  Jansenists  this  term  was  used  in  a  more  distinctive 
sense,  and  for  this  reason  I  have  translated  it  "Little  Schools"  in  Chap. 
VII.  (P.) 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          255 

a  priest  of  Lyons,  who,  in  1G66,  founded  the  Congregation 
of  the  Brethren  of  Saint  Charles,  for  the  instruction  of  poor 
children.  The  Institute  of  La  Salle  was  not  organized  till 
eighteen  years  later,  in  1684.  In  1G68,  having  addressed 
to  the  provosts  of  the  merchants  of  the  city  of  Lyons  a 
warm  appeal,  his  Proposals  for  the  establishment  of  Christian 
schools  for  the  instruction  of  the  poor,  De'mia  obtained  an 
annual  grant  of  two  hundred  livres.  In  1675  he  was 
charged  by  "express  command"  of  the  archbishop  of 
Lyons  "  with  the  management  and  direction  of  the  schools 
of  that  city  and  diocese,"  and  drew  up  a  body  of  school 
regulations  which  was  quoted  as  a  model.1  For  the  method 
of  "teaching  to  read,  of  learning  the  catechism,  of  cor- 
recting children,  and  similar  things,"  De'mia  conformed  to 
the  book  known  as  the  Parish  School  (Ecole  paroissiale) ,  of 
which  we  shall  presently  say  a  word.  He  took  it  upon  him- 
self to  proceed  "  to  the  examination  of  the  religion,  the 
ability,  and  the  good  morals,  of  the  persons  who  proposed 
to  teach  school."  But,  what  was  of  greater  moment,  he 
established,  for  preparing  and  training  them,  a  sort  of  semi- 
nary. 

A  few  quotations  will  give  an  idea  of  De'mia' s  zeal  in  the 
establishment  of  Christian  schools. 

"This  establishment  is  of  such  importance  and  of  so 
great  utility,  that  there  is  nothing  in  our  political  organiza- 
tion which  is  more  worth}-  of  the  care  and  the  watchfulness 
of  the  magistrates,  since  on  it  depend  our  peace  and  public 
tranquillity.  The  poor,  not  having  the  means  of  educating 
their  children,  leave  them  in  ignorance  of  their  obligations. 
.  .  .  Thus  we  see,  with  keen  displeasure,  that  such  an  edu- 
cation of  the  children  of  the  poor  is  totally  neglected, 
although  it  is  the  most  important  interest  of  the  State,  of/ 

1  See  the  Lectures  pedagogiques.    Hachette,  1883,  p.  420. 


256  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

which  they  comprise  the  largest  part ;  and,  although  it  is 
quite  as  necessary,  and  even  more  so,  to  maintain  public 
schools  for  them,  as  to  support  colleges  for  the  children  of 
families  in  good  circumstances.  .  .  ." 

276.  CLAUDE  JOLY.  —  In  1676,  Claude  Joly,  precentor  of 
Notre  Dame,  "collator,  director,  and  judge  of  the  primary 
schools  of  the  city,  the  suburbs,  and  the  outskirts  of  Paris," 
published  his  Christian  and  Moral  Counsels  for  the  Instruction 
of  Children.  '  There  is  but  little  to  gather  from  this  work, 
where  the  author  is  so  forgetful  of  elementary  instruction  as 
to  speak  only  of  secondary  instruction  and  of  the  educa- 
tion of  princes.  What  most  concerns  Claude  Joly  is  to  put 
in  force  the  regulations  which  forbid  the  association  of  boys 
and  girls  in  the  schools.  The  separation  of  the  sexes  was 
for  a  long  time  an  absolute  principle  in  France.  D£mia,  in 
article  nine  of  his  regulations,  restores  the  ordinance  of  the 
archbishop  of  Lyons,  "which  forbids  school-masters  to 
admit  girls,  and  school-mistresses  to  admit  boys."  Rollin 
was  of  the  same  opinion.  Claude  Joly,  in  the  capacity  of 
chief  precentor,  bluntly  claimed  his  sovereign  rights  in  the 
matter  of  primary  instruction  :  — 

"We  shall  contest  the  power  claimed  by  the  rectors  of 
Paris  to  control  the  schools,  under  the  name  and  pretext  of 
charity,  without  the  permission  of  the  chief  precentor,  to 
whom  alone  belongs  this  power.  To  him,  also,  belongs  the 
right  of  nomination  to  the  schools  of  the  religious  and  secu- 
lar" communities.  We  shall  disclose,  besides,  the  attempts 
of  'writers  to  interfere  with  the  teaching  of  orthography, 
which  belongs  only  to  good  grammarians,  that  is,  to  the 
masters  of  the  little  schools." 

We  see  to  what  petty  questions  of  prerogative  was  sacri- 
ficed, in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  great  cause  of  popular 
instruction. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          257 

277.  THE  BOOK  OF  THE  PARISH  SCHOOL. — Under  the 
title,  TJie  Parish  School,  or  the  Manner  of  Properly  Instruct- 
ing the  Children  in  the  Little  Schools,  a  priest  of  the  diocese 
of  Paris  had  written,  in  1655,  a  school  manual,  often  re- 
printed,1 which  became  the  general  standard  of  the  schools 
during  the  years  that  followed,  and  which  gives  an  exact 
idea  of  what  was  narrow  and  poorly  defined  in  the  primary 
instruction  of  that  period. 

The  author  of  the  Parish  School  does  not  have  a  high 
opinion  of  the  office  of  the  teacher,  which  he  regards  as  an 
employment  without  lustre,  without  pleasure,  and  without 
interest.  He  does  not  expect  great  results  from  instruction, 
of  which  he  is  pleased  to  say,  that  it  is  not  completely  useless. 
It  is  true  that  instruction  is  reduced  to  a  very  few  things,  — 
reading,  writing,  and  counting.  To  this  the  author  adds 
religion  and  politeness. 

Let  us  observe  in  particular,  that  the  programme  of  the 
parish  school  also  comprises  the  principles  of  the  Latin  lan- 
guage. The  primary  school  of  that  period  was  still  con- 
founded with  the  college  of  secondary  instruction ;  the 
nucieut  languages  and  rhetoric  were  taught  in  it.  In  the 
catalogue  of  the  master's  books,  drawn  up  by  the  author  of 
the  Parish  School,  we  find  a  Greek  grammar.  In  the  classes, 
the  reading  of  Latin  precedes  the  reading  of  French. 

Some  good  advice  in  practical  pedagogy  might  be  extracted 
from  the  first  part  of  the  work,  especially  on  the  duties  of  a 
school-master,  on  the  power  of  example,  and  on  the  necessity 
of  knowing  the  disposition  of  pupils.  But  how  many*  art- 
less assertions  and  mischievous  precepts,  in  that  school  code 
of  the  city  of  Paris,  in  the  near  presence  of  the  grand  cen- 
tury !  The  Parish  School  complains  that  the  scholars  eat 
too  much  bread  :  — 

1  We  have  before  us  the  edition  of  1722. 


268  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

"  The  children  of  Paris,  as  a  rule,  eat  a  great  deal  of 
bread.  This  food  stupefies  the  mind,  and  very  often  makes 
them,  at  the  age  of  nine  or  ten,  incapable  of  learning. 
Omnis  repletio  mala,  panis  vero  peasima."  A  serious  mat- 
ter is  that  espionage  is  not  only  authorized,  but  is  encouraged 
and  organized :  — 

"The  master  will  select  two  of  the  most  reliable  and 
intelligent  to  be  on  the  lookout  for  the  disorders  and  the 
improprieties  of  the  school  and  the  church.  They  shall 
write  the  names  of  the  offenders,  and  of  those  guilty  of 
improprieties,  on  pieces  of  paper  or  on  tablets,  to  be  given 
to  the  master.  These  officers  shall  be  called  observers." 

278.  LA  SALLE  (1651-1719)  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS. 
—  The  reading  of  the  Parish  School  prepares  us  the  better 
to  comprehend  the  work  of  La  Salle.  If  one  were  in  any 
degree  tempted  to  depreciate  the  Institute  of  the  Brethren 
of  the  Christian  Schools,  it  would  suffice,  to  counteract  this 
disposition,  to  contrast  the  reforms  of  La  Salle,  however 
insufficient  they  may  be,  with  the  real  state  of  the  schools  of 
that  period.  To  be  equitably  judged,  human  institutions 
ought  to  be  replaced  in  their  setting  and  in  their  environ- 
ment. It  is  eas3T  to-day  to  formulate  charges  against  the 
pedagogy  of  the  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools.  But 
considered  in  their  time,  and  compared  with  what  existed, 
or  rather  with  what  did  not  exist,  the  establishments  of  La 
Salle  deserve  the  esteem  and  the  gratitude  of  the  friends  of 
instruction.  They  represent  the  first  systematic  effort  of  the 
Catholic  Church  to  organize  popular  instruction.  What  the 
Jesuits  did  in  the  matter  of  secondary  instruction,  with  im- 
mense resources  and  for  pupils  who  paid  them  for  their 
efforts,  La  Salle  attempted  in  primary  instruction,  through 
a  thousand  obstacles  and  for  pupils  who  did  not  pay. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          259 

279.  LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  LA  SALLE.  —  We  shall  have 
to  criticise  in  the  most  of  its  principles  and  in  many  details 
of  its  practice,  the  educational  institute  of  La  Salle.     But 
that    which   merits   an    admiration   without  reserve    is   the 
professional  zeal  of  the  founder  of  the  order,  the  daunt- 
less   spirit    of    improvement    which    he    displayed    in    the 
organization   of    his    schools,    and   in   the    recruitment    of 
his  teachers  ;    it  is  also  his  tenacious  zeal  which  was  dis- 
couraged neither  by  the  jealous  opposition  of  corporations, 
the  writing-masters  for   example,  nor   by  the   inexplicable 
opposition  of  the  clergy;  and,  finally,  it  is  the  indefatiga- 
ble devotion  of  a  beautiful  life  consecrated  to  the  cause  of 
instruction,  which  was  a  long  series  of  efforts  and  sacrifices. 

At  an  early  hour,  La  Salle  had  given  proofs  of  the  energy  i 
of  his  character.  Weak  and  sickly,  he  was  obliged  to 
struggle  against  the  infirmities  of  his  constitution.  To 
overcome  sleep,  and  to  prolong  his  studious  vigils,  he 
sometimes  kneeled  on  sharp  stones,  and  sometimes  he  placed 
in  front  of  him,  upon  his  study-table,  a  board  fitted  with 
iron  points,  against  which  his  head  would  strike  as  soon  as 
fatigue  made  him  doze  and  he  leaned  forward.  Canon  of 
the  chapter  of  Reims  in  1667,  ordained  priest  in  1678,  he 
resigned  his  prebeudship  in  1683,  and,  voluntarily  making 
himself  poor,  in  order  to  approach  those  whose  souls  he 
would  save,  he  renounced  his  whole  patrimony,  to  the  great 
disgust  of  his  friends,  who  treated  him  as  a  madman. 

280.  ASCETIC  TENDENCIES.  —  But  it  is  not  a  disinterested 
love  of  the  people,  it  is  not  the  thought  of  their  moral  regen- 
eration, and  of  their  intellectual  progress,  which  animated 
and  sustained   the  efforts   of  La  Salle.     His   purpose  was 
above  all  else  religious.     He  pushed  devotion  even  to  asceti- 
cism.    In   his   childhood,  while  he  still  lived  at  home,  he 


260  THE  HISTOEY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

came  to  have  a  sense  of  unrest  in  the  parlors  of  his  mother ; 
and  one  evening,  as  his  biographers  relate,  while  those  about 
him  were  engaged  in  music,  or  were  talking  on  worldlv  mat- 
ters, he  threw  himself  into  the  arms  of  one  of  his  aunts,  and 
said  to  her,  "Madam,  relate  to  me  the  life  of  one  of  the 
saints."  He  himself  was  a  saint,  though  the  Church  did  not 
think  him  worthy  of  this  venerable  title.  In  his  youth  he 
passed  whole  nights  in  prayer,  and  slept  on  boards.  All  his 
life  he  was  severe  to  himself  and  also  to  others,  considering 
abstinence  and  privations  as  the  regimen  of  the  Christian. 
His  adversaries,  at  different  times,  imputed  this  to  him  as  a 
crime.  He  was  represented  as  a  hardened  man,  pushing  his 
ascetic  requirements  to  the  extreme  of  cruelty.  To  appease 
their  anger,  he  removed  penances  and  bodily  inflictions  from 
his  institution,  but  he  maintained  them  for  himself,  and  con- 
tinued his  life  of  voluntary  suffering.  Heroic  virtues,  it  may 
be ;  but  it  may  be  added  also,  an  unfortunate  disposition 
for  a  teacher  of  children.  We  distrust,  in  advance,  a  system 
of  teaching  whose  beginning  was  so  sad,  whose  founder 
inclosed  his  life  within  so  narrow  an  horizon,  and  which,  at 
first,  was  illuminated  by  no  rays  of  gladness  and  good 
humor. 

281.  FOUNDATIONS  OF  THE  INSTITUTE. — The  Institute  of 
the  Brethren  was  founded  in  1684,  but  it  was  not  sanctioned 
by  pontifical  authority  and  royal  power  till  forty  }-ears  later, 
in  1724. 

We  shall  not  recite  at  full  length  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
first  years  of  the  Institute.  We  simply  state  that  La  Salle 
inaugurated  his  work  b}'  offering  hospitality  in  his  own  house 
to  several  poor  teachers.  In  1679  he  opened  at  Reims  a 
school  for  boys.  In  1684  he  imposed  on  his  disciples  vows 
of  stability  and  obedience,  and  prescribed  their  costume.  In 
1688  he  went  to  Paris  in  order  to  found  schools  there,  and 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PllIMAHY  INSTRUCTION.          261 

it  was  here  in  particular,  as  he  himself  says,  that  "he  saw 
himself  persecuted  by  the  men  from  whom  he  expected  help." 
In  spite  of  all  these  difficulties  his  enterprise  prospered,  and 
when  he  died,  in  1720,  the  Institute  of  the  Brethren  already 
counted  a  large  number  of  establishments  for  primary  in- 
struction. 

282.  THE  IDEA  OF  NORMAL  SCHOOLS. — "We  know  how 
the  teaching  force  was  then  recruited.  In  Paris,  if  we  may 
believe  Pourchot,  the  chief  precentor,  Claude  Joly,  was 
obliged  to  employ,  for  the  direction  of  schools,  old-clothes- 
men, innkeepers,  cooks,  masons,  wig-makers,  puppet- 
players —  the  list  might  be  continued.  In  1682  Marie 
Moreau,  a  teacher,  was  sent  by  Bossuet  to  keep  the  school 
at  Ferte"-Gaucher.  The  rector  of  the  place,  in  his  capacity 
as  tutor  (ecoldtre),  wishing  to  ascertain  her  competence, 
subjected  her  to  an  examination,  of  which  the  following  is 
an  account :  — 

"1.  He  asked  her  if  she  could  read,  and  she  replied  that 
she  read  passably  well,  but  not  well  enough  to  teach. 

"2.  He  gave  her  a  pen  to  mend,  and  she  declared  that 
she  could  not  do  it. 

"3.  He  handed  her  a  Latin  book  and  requested  her  to 
read  it,  but  she  was  prevented  from  making  the  attempt  by 
sister  Remy,  who  had  just  prevented  her  from  exhibiting  her 
writing."1 

Ignorance,  and  often  moral  unfitness,  was  the  general 
character  of  the  teachers  of  that  period.  The}-  often  entered 
upon  their  duties  without  the  least  preparation.  La  Salle 
had  too  great  an  anxiety  for  the  good  condition  of  his  schools 
to  accept  improvised  teachers.  So  in  1685  he  opened  at 
Reims,  under  the  name  of  Seminary  for  Schoolmasters,  a 

1  Iflstoire  d'une  €cole  r/ratuite,  par  V.  Plessier,  p.  15. 


262  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

real  normal  school,  in  which  teachers  were  to  be  trained  for 
I  the  rural  districts.  Only  D£mia  had  preceded  him  in  this 
/  work.  Later  he  founded  an  establishment  of  the  same  kind 

in  Paris,  and — a  thing  worthy  of  note  —  he  annexed  to  this 
i  normal  school  a  primary  school,  in  which  the  teaching  was 
/  done  by  the  students  in  training  under  the  direction  of  an 

experienced  teacher. 

In  the  third  part  of  his  Conduct  of  Schools  La  Salle  has 

drawn  up  the  rules  for  what  he  calls  the  training  of  new 

masters.      Here   are   the   faults  that   he  notices   in   young 

teachers  :  — 

/"     1.  An  itching  to  talk  ;  2.  too  great  activity,  which  degen- 
/    erates  into  petulance  ;  3.  indifference  ;  4.  preoccupation  and 

embarrassment;    5.  harshness;    6.  spite;    7.  partiality;    8. 

slowness  and  negligence  ;  9.  pusillanimity  and  lack  of  force  ; 

10.    despondency    and    fretf ulness ;      11.    familiarity    and 

trifling;     12.  distractions  and  loss  of  time;    13.  fickleness; 

14.    giddiness;    15.  exclusiveness ;    16.  lack  of  attention  to 

the  different  characters  and  dispositions  of  children. 

283.  THE  IDEA  OF  GRATUITOUS  AND  OBLIGATORY  IN- 
STRUCTION. —  The  Institute  of  the  Brethren  of  the  Christian 
Schools,  say  the  statutes  of  the  order  in  so  many  words,  is  a 
society  whose  members  make  a  profession  to  conduct  schools 
gratuitously.  "  La  Salle  thought  only  of  the  children  of 
artisans  and  of  the  poor,  who,  he  said,  being  occupied 
during  the  whole  day  in  earning  their  own  livelihood  and  that 
of  their  families,  could  not  give  their  children  the  instruction 
they  need,  and  a  respectable  and  Christian  education."  In 
1694,  the  founder  of  the  Institute  and  his  first  twelve  disci- 

Iples  went  and  kneeled  at  the  foot  of  the  altar,  and  pledged 
themselves  to  "  conduct  collectively  and  through  organized 
effort  schools  of  gratuitous  instruction,  even  when,  in  order 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          203 

to  do  this,  they  might  be  obliged  to  ask  alms  and  to  live  on 
bread  alone." 

But  a  thing  still  more  remarkable  than  to  have  popular- 
ized gratuitous  instruction,  already  realized  in  many  places 
through  charity  schools,  is  to  have  formed  the  conception  of 
obligatory  instruction.  La  Salle,  who  did  not  believe  that 
this  was  any  encroachment  on  the  liberty  of  parents,  pro- 
poses, in  this  Conduct  of  Schools,  a  means  for  affecting  their 
will :  - 

"  If  among  the  poor  there  are  certain  ones  who  are  unwill- 
ing to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  for  instruction, 
they  should  be  reported  to  the  rectors.  The  latter  will  be 
able  to  cure  them  of  their  indifference  by  threatening  to  give 
them  no  more  assistance  till  they  send  their  children  to 
school." 

284.  PROFESSIONAL  INSTRUCTION.  — Besides  primary  schools 
proper,  La  Salle,  who  is  truly  an  innovator,  inaugurated  the 
organization    of   a   technical   and   professional   instruction. 
At  .Saint  Yon,  near  Rouen,  he  organized  a  sort  of  college 
where  was  taught  "  all  that  a  young  man  can  learn,  with 
the  exception  of  Latin,  and  whose  purpose  was  to  prepare 
the  student  for  commercial,  industrial,  and   administrative 
occupations." 

285.  CONDUCT  OP  THE   CHRISTIAN    SCHOOLS  :    SUCCESSIVE 
EDITIONS.  —  La  Salle  took  the  trouble  to  draw  up  for  his 
Institute  a  very  minute  code  of  rules,  with  this  title:   The 
Conduct  of  Schools.     The   first   edition  bears  the  date  of 
1720.     It  appeared  at  Avignon  a  year  after  the    author's 
death.1     Two  other  editions  have  since  appeared,  in  1811 
:md  in  1870,  with  some  important  modifications.     The  sub- 

1  We  have  before  us  a  copy  of  this  Avignon  edition:  J.  Charles  Chasta- 
nier,  printer  and  bookseller,  near  the  College  of  the  Jesuits. 


264  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

stance  has  not  been  changed,  but  certain  passages  relative 
to  discipline,  and  to  the  use  of  the  rod,  have  been  sup- 
pressed. 

"  With  the  view  to  adapt  our  education  to  the  mildness  of 
the  present  state  of  manners,"  says  the  preface  of  1811, 
"  we  have  suppressed  or  modified  whatever  includes  cor- 
poral correction,  and  have  advantageously  (sic)  replaced 
this,  on  the  one  hand,  by  good  marks,  by  promises  and 
rewards,  and  on  the  other  by  bad  marks,  by  deprivations 
and  tasks." 

On  the  other  hand,  some  additions  have  been  made.  The 
Institute  of  the  Brethren  had  to  yield  in  part  to  the  demands 
of  the  times,  and  to  subtract  something  from  the  inflexi- 
bility of  its  government. 

"The  Brethren,"  it  is  said  in  the  preface  to  the  edition  of 
1870,  written  by  the  Frere  Philip,  "  the  Brethren  have  little 
by  little  enlarged  the  original  Conduct,  in  proportion  as 
they  have  perfected  their  methods.  ...  It  is  plain  that  a 
book  of  this  kind  cannot  receive  a  final  form.  New  experi- 
ments, progress  in  methods,  legislative  enactments,  new 
needs,  etc.,  require  that  it  receive  divers  modifications  from 
time  to  time." 

286.  ABUSE  OF  REGULATIONS.  — A  feature  common  to  the 
pedagogy  of  the  Jesuits,  and  to  that  of  the  Brethren  of  the 

/  Christian  Schools,  is,  that  everything  is  regulated  in  advance 
with  extraordinan-  exactness.     No  discretion  is  left  to  the 

,    teachers.     The  instruction  is  but  a  rule  in  action.     All  nov- 

V  elty  is  interdicted. 

"It  has  been  necessary,"  says  the  Preface  of  La  Salle,  to 
prepare  this  Conduct  of  the  Christian  schools,  "  to  the  end 
that  there  may  be  uniformity  in  all  the  schools,  and  in  nil 
the  places  where  there  are  Brethren  of  the  Institute,  and 
that  the  methods  employed  ma}'  always  be  the  same.  Man 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          265 

is  so  subject  to  slackness,  and  even  to  changeableness,  that 
there  must  be  written  rules  for  him,  in  order  to  keep  him 
within  the  bounds  of  his  duty,  and  to  prevent  him  from 
introducing  something  new,  or  from  destroying  that  which 
has  been  wisely  established." 

Need  we  be  astonished,  after  this,  that  the  teaching  of  the 
Brethren  often  became  a  useless  routine? 

287.  DIVISION   OF   THE   CONDUCT. — The   Conduct  of  the 
Christian   Schools   is   divided   into   three   parts.     The   first 
treats  of  all  the  exercises  of  the  school,  and  of  what  is 
done   in   it  from  the  time  the  pupils  enter  till  they  leave. 
The  second  describes  the  means  for  establishing  and  main- 
taining order  ;  in  a  word,  the  discipline.    The  third  treats  of 
the  duties  of  the  inspector  of   schools,  of  the  qualities  of 
the  teachers,  and  of  the  rules  to  be  followed  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  teachers  themselves.     This  may  be  called,  so  to 
speak,  the  manual  of  the  normal  schools  of  the  Institute. 

288.  INTERIOR   ORGANIZATION    OF   THE    SCHOOLS. — That 
which  first  strikes  the  attention  in  the  Christian  Schools, 
such  as   La  Salle  organized,  is  the  complete  silence  that 
reigns  in  them.     Nothing  is  better  than  silence  on  the  part 
of   pupils,  when  it  can  be  obtained,  but  La  Salle  enjoins 
silence  on  teachers  as  well.     The  Frere  is  a  professor  who 
does  not  talk. 

"He  will  watch  carefully  over  himself,  to  speak  very 
rarely,  and  very  low."  "It  would  be  of  but  little  use  for 
the  teacher  to  try  to  make  his  pupils  keep  silence  if  he  does 
not  do  this  himself."  "When  necessity  obliges  him  to  speak 
—  and  he  is  careful  that  this  necessity  is  rare  —  he  will 
always  speak  in  a  moderate  tone." 

It  might  be  said  that  La  Salle  fears  a  strong  and  sono- 
rous voice. 


266  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

How,  then,  shall  the  teacher  communicate  with  his  pupils, 
since  he  is  almost  debarred  from  the  use  of  speech?  La 
Salle  has  invented,  to  supersede  language,  a  complete  sys- 
tem of  signs,  a  sort  of  scholastic  telegraphy,  a  long  account 
of  which  will  be  found  in  several  chapters  of  the  Conduct. 
To  have  prayers  repeated,  the  teacher  will  fold  his  hands ; 
to  have  the  catechism  repeated,  he  will  make  the  sign  of  the 
cross.  In  other  cases  he  will  strike  his  breast,  will  look  at 
the  pupil  steadily,  etc.  Besides,  he  will  employ  an  instru- 
ment of  iron  named  a  signal,  which  he  will  raise  or  lower, 
and  handle  in  a  hundred  ways,  to  indicate  his  wish,  or  to 
announce  the  beginning  or  the  close  of  such  or  such  an 
exercise. 

S  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  distrust  of  speech?  And 
what  are  we  to  think  of  these  schools  of  mutes  where 
teachers  and  pupils  proceed  only  by  signs  ?  When  a  scholar 
asks  permission  to  speak,  he  will  stand  erect  in  his  place, 
with  hands  crossed  and  eyes  modestly  lowered.  Doubtless, 
to  attempt  to  excuse  these  practices,  we  must  consider  the 
annoyances  of  a  noisy  school,  and  the  advantages  of  a 
silent  school  where  everything  is  done  discreetly  and  noise- 
lessly. Is  there  not,  however,  in  these  odd  regulations, 
something  besides  the  desire  for  order  and  good  conduct,  — 
the  revelation  of  a  complete  system  of  pedagogy  which  is 
afraid  of  life  and  liberty,  and  which,  under  the  pretext  of 
making  the  school  quiet,  deadens  the  school,  and,  in  the 
end,  reduces  teachers  and  pupils  to  mere  machines? 

289.  SIMULTANEOUS  INSTRUCTION. — By  the  side  of  the 
evil  we  must  note  the  good.  Up  to  the  time  of  La  Salle, 
the  individual  method  was  almost  alone  in  use  in  primary 
instruction  ;  but  he  substituted  for  this  the  simultaneous 
method,  that  is,  teaching  given  to  all  the  pupils  at  the  same 
time.  For  this  purpose,  La  Salle  divided  each  school  into 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          267 

three  divisions:  "The  division  of  the  weakest,  that  of  the 
medicares,  and  that  of  the  more  intelligent  or  the  more 
capable." 

"All  the  scholars  of  the  same  order  will  receive  the 
same  lesson  together.  The  instructor  will  see  that  all  are 
attentive,  and  that,  in  reading  for  example,  all  read  in  a 
low  voice  what  the  teacher  reads  in  a  loud  voice." 

To  aid  the  instructor,  La  Salle  gives  him  one  or  two  of 
the  better  pupils  of  each  division,  who  become  his  assistants, 
and  whom  he  calls  inspectors.  ' '  The  more  children  have 
taught,"  said  La  Salle,  "  the  more  they  will  learn." 

To  be  just,  however,  we  must  recognize,  in  certain  recom- 
mendations of  La  Salle,  some  desire  to  appeal  to  the  judg- 
ment and  the  reason  of  the  child  :  — 

"The  teacher  will  not  speak  to  the  scholars  during  the 
catechism,  as  in  preaching,  but  he  will  interrogate  them 
almost  continually  by  questions,  direct  or  indirect,  in  order 
to  make  them  comprehend  that  which  he  is  teaching  them." 

The  Frere  Luccard,  in  his  Life  of  the  Venerable  J.  B.  de 
La  Salle  J-  quotes  this  still  more  expressive  passage,  borrowed 
from  his  manuscript  Counsels :  — 

"  Let  the  teacher  be  careful  not  to  lend  his  pupils  too 
much  help  in  resolving  the  questions  that  have  been  proposed 
to  them.  He  ought,  on  the  contrary,  to  invite  them  not 
to  be  discouraged,  but  to  seek  with  ardor  what  he  knows 
they  will  be  able  to  find  for  themselves.  He  will  convince 
them  that  they  will  the  better  retain  the  knowledge  they 
have  acquired  \>\  a  personal  and  persevering  effort." 

290.  WHAT  WAS  LEARNED  IN  THE  CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS. 
—  Reading,  writing,  orthography,  arithmetic,  and  the  cate- 
chism,—  this  is  the  pi'ogramme  of  La  Salle. 

1  Two  volumes,  Paris,  1876. 


268  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

In  reading,  La  Salle,  agreeing  in  this  respect  with  Port 
Royal,  requires  that  French  books  be  used  in  the  beginning. 

"  The  book  in  which  the  pupil  will  begin  to  learn  Latin  is 
the  Psalter ;  but  this  lesson  will  be  given  only  to  those  who 
can  readily  read  in  French." 

La  Salle  requires  that  the  pupil  shall  not  be  exercised  in 
writing  till  "  he  can  read  perfectly."  He  attaches,  more- 
over, an  extreme  importance  to  calligraphy,  and  it  is  known 
that  the  Brethren  have  remained  masters  in  this  art.  La 
Salle  does  not  weary  in  giving  advice  on  this  subject :  the 
pens,  the  knife  for  mending  them,  the  ink,  the  paper,  the 
tracing-papers  and  blotters,  round  letters  and  italic  letters 
(a  bastard  script),  —  everything  is  passed  in  review.1  The 
Conduct  also  insists  "  on  the  manner  of  teaching  the  proper 
posture  of  the  body"  and  "  on  the  manner  of  teaching  how 
to  hold  the  pen  and  the  paper." 

*'  It  will  be  useful  and  timely  in  the  beginning  to  give  the 
pupil  a  stick  of  the  bigness  of  a  pen,  on  which  there  are  three 
notches,  two  on  the  right  and  one  on  the  left,  to  mark  the 
places  where  his  fingers  should  be  put." 

The  exercises  in  writing  are  to  be  followed  by  exercises  in 
orthography  and  in  composition  :  — 

"•  The  teacher  will  require  the  pupils  to  compose  and  write 
for  themselves  notes,  receipts,  bills,  etc.  He  will  also 
require  them  to  write  out  what  they  remember  of  the  cate- 
chism, and  of  the  lectures  that  they  have  heard."  2 

As  to  arithmetic,  reduced  to  the  four  rules,  we  must 
commend  La  Salle's  attempt  to  have  it  learned  by  reason 
and  not  by  routine.  Thus,  he  requires  the  teacher  to  inter- 
rogate the  pupil,  in  order  to  make  him  the  better  comprehend 

1  The  nse  of  the  round  script  was  in  fashion.    La  Salle  introduced  the 
bastard  hand. 

2  See  Chap.  II.  of  the  Second  Part. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          269 

and  retain  the  rule,  or  to  make  sure  that  he  is  attentive.  He 
"will  give  him  a  complete  understanding"  of  what  he 
teaches;  and,  finally,  he  will  require  him  "to  produce  a 
certain  number  of  rules  that  he  has  discovered  for  himself." 

Prayers  and  religious  exercises  naturally  hold  a  large  place 
in  the  schools  organized  by  La  Salle  :  — 

"There  shall  always  be  two  or  three  scholars  kneeling, 
one  from  each  class,  who  will  tell  their  beads  one  after 
another." 

"  Care  will  everywhere  be  taken  that  the  scholars  hear  the 
holy  mass  every  day." 

"  A  half  hour  each  day  shall  be  devoted  to  the  cate- 
chism." 

291.  METHOD  OF  TEACHING. — The  Institute  of  the 
Brethren  has  often  been  criticised  for  the  mechanical  char- 
acter of  its  instruction.  The  Frere  Philip,  in  the  edition  of 
the  Conduct  published  in  1870,  implicitly  acknowledges  the 
justice  of  this  criticism  when  he  writes :  "  Elementary 
instruction  has  assumed  a  particular  character  in  these  last 
days,  of  which  tee  must  take  account.  Proposing  for  its 
chief  end  to  train  the  judgment  of  the  pupil,  it  gives  less 
importance  than  heretofore  to  the  culture  of  the  memory  ;  it 
makes  especial  use  of  methods  which  call  into  activity  the 
intelligence,  and  lead  the  child  to  reflect,  to  take  account  of 
facts,  to  withdraw  from  the  domain  of  words  to  enter  into 
that  of  ideas."  Do  not  these  wise  cautions  unmistakably 
betray  the  existence  of  an  evil  tradition  which  should  be 
corrected,  but  which  tends  to  hold  its  ground?  He  who  has 
read  the  Conduct  is  not  left  in  doubt  that  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  pedagogy  of  the  Christian  Schools,  at  the  first, 
was  a  mechanical  and  routine  exercise  of  the  memory,  and 
the  absence  of  life. 


270  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

292.  CHRISTIAN  POLITENESS.  —  Under  the  title  of  Rules 
of  Decorum  and  Christian  Civility,  La  Salle  had  composed  a 
reading  book,  intended  for  pupils  already  somewhat  ad- 
vanced, and  printed  in  Gothic  characters.1  It  was  not  only 
a  manual  of  politeness,  but  was,  the  Conduct  claims,  a 
treatise  on  ethics,  "containing  all  the  duties  of  children, 
both  towards  God  and  towards  their  parents."  But  we 
would  examine  the  work  in  vain  for  the  justification  of  this 
remark.  In  it  are  discussed  only  the  puerile  details  of  out- 
ward behavior  and  of  worldly  bearing.  It  would,  however, 
be  in  bad  taste  to  criticise  at  this  day  a  book  of  another  age, 
whose  artlessness  makes  us  smile.  La  Salle's  purpose  was 
certainly  praiseworthy,  though  attempting  a  little  too  much. 
It  is  said  in  the  Preface  that  "  there  is  not  a  single  one  of 
our  actions  which  ought  not  to  be  regulated  by  motives 
purely  Christian."  Hence  an  infinite  number  of  minute 
prescriptions  upon  the  simplest  acts  of  daily  life.2 

But  here  are  a  few  specimens  of  this  pretended  elementary 
ethics  :  — 

"It  is  not  proper  to  talk  when  one  has  retired,  the  bed 
being  made  for  rest." 

"  One  should  try  to  make  no  noise  and  not  to  snore  while 
asleep  ;  nor  should  one  often  turn  from  side  to  side  in  bed  as 
if  he  were  restless  and  did  not  know  on  which  side  to  lie." 

"  It  is  not  becoming,  when  one  is  in  company,  to  take  off 
one's  shoes." 

1  We  have  before  us  the  sixth  edition  of  this  work :  Rouen,  1729.    La 
Salle  had  written  it  towards  the  year  1703. 

2  See,  for  example,  the  following  chapters :  upon  the  nose  and  the  manner 
of  using  the  handkerchief  and  of  sneezing  (chap,  vii.) ;  upon  the  back,  the 
shoulders,  the  arms,  and  the  elbow  (chap,  viii.) ;  on  the  manner  in  which 
one  ought  to  behave  with  respect  to  the  bones,  the  sauce,  and  the  fruit 
(chap,  vi.,  of  the  second  part) ;  on  the  manner  of  behaving  while  walking 
in  the  streets,  on  journeys,  in  carriages,  and  on  horseback  (chap.  x.). 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.         271 

"  It  is  impolite  to  play  with  a  stick  or  a  cane,  and  to  use 
it  to  strike  the  ground  or  pebbles,  etc.,  etc." 

How  many  mistakes  in  politeness  we  should  make  every 
day  of  our  lives  if  the  rules  of  La  Salle  were  infallible  ! 

293.  CORPORAL   CHASTISEMENTS. — The   Brethren,  within 
two  centuries,  have  singularly  ameliorated  their  system  of  cor- 
rection.   "Imperative  circumstances,"  said  the  Frere  Philip 
in  1870,  "no  longer  permit  us  to  tolerate  corporal  punish- 
ment in  our  schools."     Already,  in  1811,  there  was  talk  of 
suppressing  entirely,  or  at  least  modifying,  the  use  of  these 
punishments.      The  instruments  of  torture  were  perfected. 
"  We  reduce  the  heavy  ferule,  the  inconvenience  of  which 
has  been  only  too  often  felt,  to  a  simple  piece  of  leather, 
about  a  foot  long  and  an  inch  wide,  and  slit  in  two  at  one 
end ;  still  we  hope  that  by  divine  help  and  by  the  mildness 
of  our  very  dear  and  dearly  beloved  colleagues,  they  will 
make  use  of  it  only  in  cases  of  unavoidable  necessity,  and 
only  to  give  a  stroke  with  it  on  the  hand,  without  the  per- 
mission ever  to  make  any  other  use  of  it." 

But  at  first,  and  in  the  original  Conduct?  corporal  pun- 
ishment is  freely  permitted  and  regulated  with  exactness. 
La  Salle  distinguished  five  sorts  of  corrections,  —  repri- 
mand, penances,  the  ferule,  the  rod,  expulsion  from^hool. 

294.  REPRIMANDS.  —  Silence,  we  have  seen,  is  the  funda- 
mental rule  of  La  Salle's  schools :  "  There  must  be  as  little 
speaking  as  possible.     Consequently,  corrections  by  word  of 
mouth  are  very  rarely  to  be  employed."      It  even  seems, 
adds  the  Conduct,  that  "  it  is  much  better  not  to  use  them 
at  all "  ! 

A  curious  system  of  discipline,  verily,  where  it  is  as  good 

1  See  the  edition  of  1720,  from  page  140  to  page  180. 


272  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

as  forbidden  to  resort  to  admonitions,  to  severe  reprimands, 
to  an  appeal  through  speech  to  the  reason  and  the  feelings  of 
the  child ;  where,  consequently,  there  is  no  place  for  the 
moral  authority  of  the  teacher,  but  where  there  is  at  once 
invoked  the  ultima  ratio  of  constraint  and  violence,  of  the 
ferule  and  the  rod ! 

295.  PENANCES. — La  Salle  recommends  penances  as  well 
as  corporal  corrections.     By  this  term  he-  means  punishments 
like  the  following :     maintaining  a  kneeling  posture  in  the 
school ;    learning  a  few  pages  of   the   catechism  by  heart ; 
"holding  his  book  before  his  eyes  for  the  space  of  half  an 
hour  without  looking  off  ; "  keeping  motionless,  with  clasped 
hands  and  downcast  eyes,  etc. 

296.  THE  FERULE. — We  have  not  to  discuss  in  this  place 
the  use  of  material   means   of   correction.      The    Brethren 
themselves  have  repudiated   them.      Only  it   is   provoking 
that  they  bow  to  what  they  call  "  imperative  circumstances," 
and  not  to  considerations  based  on  principles.      But  it   is 
interesting,  were  it  only  from  an  historical  point  of  view,  to 
ret-all  the  minute  prescriptions  of  the  founder  of  the  Order. 

The  Conduct  first  describes  the  ferule,  "  an  instrument 
formed  of  two  pieces  of  leather  sewed  together ;  it  shall  be 
from  ten  to  twelve  inches  long,  including  the  handle  ;  the 
palm  shall  be  oval,  and  two  inches  in  diameter ;  the 
palm  shall  be  lined  on  the  inside  so  as  not  to  be  wholly  flat, 
but  rounded  to  fit  the  hand."  Nothing  is  overlooked,  we 
observe ;  the  form  of  the  ferule  is  officially  defined.  But 
what  shocks  us  still  more  is  the  nature  of  the  faults  that 
provoke  the  application  of  the  ferule:  "1.  for  not  having 
attended  to  the  lesson,  or  for  having  played ;  2.  for  being 
tardy  at  school ;  3.  for  not  having  obeyed  the  first  signal." 
It  is  true  that  La  Salle,  always  preoccupied  with  writing, 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.          273 

orders  the  ferule  to  be  applied  onl}-  to  the  left  hatid ;  the 
right  hand  shall  always  be  spared.  The  child,  moreover,  is 
not  to  cry  while  he  receives  the  ferule ;  if  he  does,  he  is  to 
be  punished  and  corrected  anew. 

297.  THE  ROD.  — In  the  penal  code  of  La  Salle,  the  cate- 
gories of  faults  worthy  of  punishment  are  sharply  defined. 
The  rod  shall  be  employed  for  the  following  faults :  1 .  re- 
fusal to  obey  ;  2.  when  the  pupil  has  formed  the  habit  of  not 
giving  heed  to  the  lesson  ;  3.  when  he  has  made  blots  upon 
his  paper  instead  of  writing  ;  4.  when  he  has  had  a  fight  with 
his  comrades ;  5.  when  he  has  neglected  his  prayers  in 
church;  6.  when  he  has  been  wanting  in  "modesty"  at 
mass  or  during  the  catechism  ;  7.  when  he  has  been  absent 
from  school,  from  mass,  or  from  the  catechism. 

Even  supposing  that  the  principle  of  the  rod  is  admissible, 
we  must  still  condemn  the  wrong  use  which  La  Salle  makes 
of  it,  for  faults  manifestly  out  of  proportion  to  such  a  chas- 
tisement. 

I  very  well  know  that  the  author  of  the  Conduct  requires 
that  corrections  shall  be  rare  ;  but  could  he  be  obeyed,  when 
he  put  into  the  hands  of  his  teachers  scarcely  any  other 
means  of  discipline? 

But  to  comprehend  to  what  extent  La  Salle  forgot  what  is 
due  to  the  dignity  of  the  child,  and  considered  him  as  a 
machine,  without  an}'  regard  to  the  delicacy  of  his  feelings, 
with  no  respect  for  his  person,  we  must  read  to  the  end  the 
strange  prescriptions  of  this  manual  of  the  rod.  The  pre- 
cautions that  La  .Salle  exacts  make  still  more  evident  the 
impropriety  of  such  punishments:  — 

' '  When  the  teacher  would  punish  a  scholar  with  the  rod, 
he  will  make  the  ordinary  sign  to  summon  the  attention  of 
the  school ;  next  he  will  indicate  by  means  of  the  signal  the 


274  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

decree  which  the  pupil  has  violated,  and  then  show  him  the 
place  where  correction  is  ordinarily  administered;  ami  he 
will  at  once  go  there,  and  will  prepare  to  receive  the  punish- 
ment, standing  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  be  seen  indecently 
by  any  one.  This  practice  of  having  the  scholar  prepare 
himself  for  receiving  the  correction,  without  any  need  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher  of  putting  his  hand  upon  him,  shall  be 
very  exactly  observed. 

"While  the  scholar  is  preparing  himself  to  receive  the  cor- 
rection, the  teacher  shall  be  making  an  inward  preparation 
to  give  it  in  a  spirit  of  love,  and  in  a  clear  view  of  God. 
Then  he  will  go  from  his  desk  with  dignity  and  gravity. 

"  And  when  he  shall  have  reached  the  place  where  the 
scholar  is  "  (it  is  stated,  moreover,  that  this  place  should  be  in 
one  of  the  most  remote  and  most  obscure  parts  of  the  school, 
where  the  nakedness  of  the  victim  cannot  be  seen),  "  he  will 
speak  a  few  words  to  him  to  prepare  him  to  receive  the  cor- 
rection with  humility,  submission,  and  a  purpose  of  amend- 
ment ;  then  he  will  strike  three  blows  as  is  usual ;  to  go 
beyond  five  blows,  there  would  be  needed  a  special  order  of 
the  director. 

"  He  shall  be  careful  not  to  put  his  hand  on  the  scholar. 
If  the  scholar  is  not  ready,  he  shall  return  to  his  desk  with- 
out saying  a  word  ;  and  when  he  returns,  he  shall  give  him 
the  most  severe  punishment  allowed  without  special  permis- 
sion, that  is,  five  blows. 

"  When  a  teacher  shall  have  thus  been  obliged  to  compel  a 
scholar  to  receive  correction,  he  shall  attempt  in  some  way 
a  little  time  afterwards  to  make  him  see  and  acknowledge 
his  fault,  and  shall  make  him  come  to  himself,  and  give  him 
a  strong  and  sincere  resolution  never  to  allow  himself  again 
to  fall  into  such  a  revolt." 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.  275 

The  moment  is  perhaps  not  well  chosen  to  preach  a 
sermon  and  to  violate  the  rule  which  forbids  the  Brethren 
the  use  of  the  reprimand. 

' '  After  the  scholar  has  been  corrected,  he  will  modestly 
kneel  in  the  middle  of  the  room  before  the  teacher,  with 
arms  crossed,  to  thank  him  for  having  corrected  him,  and 
will  then  turn  towards  the  crucifix  to  thank  God  for  it,  and 
to  promise  Him  at  the  same  time  not  again  to  commit  the 
fault  for  which  he  had  just  been  corrected.  This  he  will  do 
without  speaking  aloud  ;  after  which  the  teacher  will  give 
him  the  sign  to  go  to  his  place." 

Is  it  possible  to  have  a  higher  misconception  of  human 
nature,  to  trifle  more  ingeniously  with  the  pride  of  the  child, 
and  with  his  most  legitimate  feelings,  and  to  mingle,  in  the 
most  repulsive  manner,  indiscreet  and  infamous  practices 
with  the  exhibition  of  religious  sentiments? 

"It  is  absurd,"  says  Kant,  "  to  require  the  children  whom 
we  punish  to  thank  us,  to  kiss  our  hands,  etc.  This  is  to 
try  to  make  servile  creatures  of  them." 

To  justify  La  Salle,  some  quotations  from  his  works  have 
been  invoked. 

"For  the  love  of  God,  do  not  use  blows  of  the  hand. 
Be  very  careful  never  to  give  children  a  blow." 

But  it  is  necessaiy  to  know  the  exact  thought  of  the 
author  of  the  Conduct,  and  this  explains  the  following 
passage  :  — 

"  No  corrections  should  be  employed  save  those  which  are 
in  use  in  the  schools  ;  and  so  scholars  should  never  be  struck 
with  the  hand  or  the  foot." 

In  other  words,  the  teacher  should  never  strike  except 
with  the  authorized  instruments,  and  according  to  the  official 
regulations. 


THE    HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

298.  MUTUAL   ESPIONAGE.  —  We   may  say  without  exag- 
geration that  the  Conduct  recommends  mutual  espionage  :  — 

"  The  inspector  of  schools  shall  be  careful  to  appoint 
one  of  the  most  prudent  scholars  to  observe  those  who  make 
a  noise  while  they  assemble,  and  this  scholar  shall  then 
report  to  the  teacher  what  has  occurred,  without  allowing  the 
others  to  know  of  it." 

299.  REWARDS.  — While  La  Salle  devotes  more  than  forty 
pages  to  corrections,  the  chapter  on  rewards  comprises  two 
small  pages. 

Eewards  shall  be  given  "  from  time  to  time."  They  shall 
be  of  three  kinds  :  rewards  for  piety,  for  ability,  and  for 
diligence.  They  shall  consist  of  books,  pictures,  plaster 
casts,  crucifix  and  virgin,  chaplets,  engraved  texts,  etc. 

300.  CONCLUSION.  —  We   have   said   enough   to   give    an 
exact  idea  of  the  Institute  of  the  Christian  Brethren  in  its 
primitive  form.    Its  faults  were  certainly  grave,  and  we  can- 
not approve  the  general  spirit  of  those  establishments  for 
education  where  pupils  are  forbidden  "  to  joke  while  they 
are  at  meals"  ;  to  give  anything  whatsoever  to  one  another  ; 
where  children  arc  to  enter  the  school-room  so  deliberately 
and  quietly  that  the  noise  of  their  footsteps  is  not  heard  ; 
where   teachers   are   forbidden  "to   be  familiar"  with  the 
pupils,  "  to  allow  themselves  to  descend  to  anything  com- 
mon, as  it  would  be  to  laugh  ..."     But  whatever  the  dis- 
tance which  separates  those  gloomy  schools  from  our  modern 
ideal,  — from  the  pleasant,  active,  animated  school,  such  as 
we  conceive  it  to-day,  —  there  is  none  the  less  obligation  to 
do  justice  to  La  Salle,  to  pardon  him  for  the  practices  which 
were  those  of    his  time,  and  to  admire  him   for  the  good 
qualities  that  were  peculiarly  his  own.     The  criticism  that  is 


CATHOLICISM  AND  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.         277 

truly  fruitful,   is  that  which  is   especially  directed   to   the 
good,  without  caviling  at  the  bad.1 

[301.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  This  study  exhibits  the 
zeal  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  education  of  the  children 
of  the  poor.  The  motive  was  not  the  spirit  of  domination, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Jesuits,  but  a  sincere  desire  to  engage 
in  a  humane  work. 

2.  A  proof  of  the  multiplication  of  schools,  and  so  of  the 
diffusion   of    the   new    educational    spirit,    is    the  wretched 
quality  of  those  who  were  allowed  to  teach.     There  must  be 
schools  even  if  the}'  are  poor  ones. 

3.  The  need  of  competent  teachers  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Teachers'  Seminary,  the  parent  of  the  modern 
normal   school.      The   two    elements    in    this    professional 
instruction  seem  to  have  been  a  knowledge  of  the  subjects 
to  be  taught  and  of  methods  of  organization  and  discipline. 

4.  The  severe  discipline  and  enforced  silence  of  La  Salle's 
schools  permit  the  inference  that  the  school  of  the  period 
was  the  scene  of  lawlessness  and  disorder.     The  reaction 
went  to  an  extreme ;  but  considering  the  times,  this  excess 
was  a  virtue. 

5.  The  scarcity  of  teachers  and  the  abundance  of  pupils 
led  to  the  expedient  of  mutual  and  simultaneous  instruction. 
While  this  method  is  absolutely  bad,  it  was  relatively  good. 

6.  To  the  benevolent  and  inventive  spirit  of  La  Salle  is 
due  the  organization  of  industrial  schools.] 

1  The  influence  of  the  teaching  congregations  in  general,  and  of  this  one 
in  particular,  on  public  education  as  administered  by  the  State,  is  very 
strikingly  exhibited  by  Meunier  in  his  Lutte  du  Principe  Clerical  et  du 
Principe  Laique  dans  I' Enseic/nement  (Paris:  1861).  There  is  also  inter- 
esting information  concerning  La  Salle.  See  particularly  the  introductory 
Letter  and  Chaps.  I.  and  II.  (P.) 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

KOUSSEATT  AND  THE  ^MLLE. 

THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY;  THE  PRECURSORS  OP 
ROUSSEAU;  THE  ABBE  DE  SAINT  PIERRE;  OTHER  INSPIRERS  OP 
KOUS8EAU  ;  PUBLICATION  OF  THE  EMILE  (1762);  ROUSSEAU  AS  A 
TEACHER;  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  EMILE;  ITS  ROMANTIC 
AND  UTOPIAN  CHARACTER;  DIVISION  OF  THE  WORK;  THE  FIRST  TWO 
BOOKS  J  EDUCATION  OF  THE  BODY  AND  OF  THE  SENSES  J  LET  NAT t: HE 
ACT  J  THE  MOTHER  TO  NURSE  HER  OWN  CHILDREN  ;  NEGATIVE  EDU- 
CATION ;  THE  CHILD'S  RIGHT  TO  HAPPINESS;  THE  THIRD  BOOK  OF 
THE  EMILE  J  CHOICE  IN  THE  THINGS  TO  BE  TAUGHT  ;  THE  ABBE 
DE  SAINT  PIERRE  AND  ROUSSEAU;  EMILE  AT  FIFTEEN]  EDUCATION  OF 
THE  SENSIBILITIES  J  THE  FOURTH  BOOK  OF  THE  EMILE  J  GENESIS 
OF  THE  AFFECTIONS;  MORAL  EDUCATION;  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION; 
THE  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH  OF  THE  SAVOYARD  VICAR;  SOPHIE 
AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN;  GENERAL  CONCLUSION;  INFLU- 
ENCE OF  ROUSSEAU  J  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


302.  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.  — 
The  most  striking  of  the  general  characteristics  of  French 
pedagogy  in  the  eighteenth  century,  is  that  in  it  the  lay  spirit 
comes  into  mortal  collision  with  the  ecclesiastical  spirit. 
What  a  contrast  between  the  clerical  preceptors  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  and  the  philosophical  educators  of  the  eight- 
eenth !  The  Jesuits,  all-powerful  under  Louis  XIV.,  are 
to  be  decried,  condemned,  and  finally  expelled  in  17G2. 
The  first  place  in  the  theory  and  in  the  practice  of  education 
will  belong  to  laymen.  Rousseau  is  to  write  the  Emile. 
D'Alembert  and  Diderot  will  be  the  educational  advisers  of 
the  Empress  of  Russia.  The  parliamentarians,  La  Chalotais 


EOUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  279 

and  Holland,  will  attempt  to  substitute  for  the  action  of  the 
Jesuits  the  action  of  the  State,  or,  at  least,  one  of  the  powers 
of  the  State.  Finally,  with  the  Revolution,  the  lay  spirit 
will  succeed  in  triumphing. 

Again,  the  pedagogy  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  distin- 
guished by  its  critical  and  reformatory  tendencies.  The 
centuiy  of  Louis  XIV.  is,  in  general,  a  century  of  content ; 
the  century  of  Voltaire,  a  century  of  discontent. 

Besides,  the  philosophical  spirit,  which  associates  the 
theory  of  education  with  the  laws  of  the  human  spirit,  which 
is  not  content  to  modify  routine  by  a  few  ameliorations  of 
detail,  which  establishes  general  principles  and  aspires  to  an 
ideal  perfection,  —  the  philosophical  spirit,  with  its  excel- 
lencies and  with  its  defects,  —  will  come  to  the  light  in  the 
Emile,  and  in  some  other  writings  of  the  same  period. 

Finally,  and  this  last  characteristic  is  but  the  consequence 
of  the  others,  education  tends  to  become  national,  and  at  the 
same  time  humane.  Preparation  for  life  replaces  preparation  * 
for  death.  During  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a 
conception  is  in  process  of  elaboration  which  the  men  of  the 
Revolution  will  exhibit  in  its  true  light,  —  that  of  an  educa- 
tion, public  and  national,  which  makes  citizens,  which  works 
for  country  and  for  real  life. 


303.  PRECURSORS  OF  ROUSSEAU.  — The  greatest  educational 


event  of  the  eighteenth  century,  before  the  expulsion  of  the 


Jesuits  and  the  events  of  the  French  Revolution,  is  the  pub- 
lication of  the  Emile.  Rousseau  is  undeniably  the  first  in 
rank  among  the  founders  of  French  pedagogy,  and  his  influ- 
ence will  be  felt  abroad,  especially  in  Germany.  But  what- 
ever may  be  the  originality  of  the  author  of  the  Emile,  his 
system  is  not  a  stroke  of  genius  for  which  no  preparation 
had  been  made.  He  had  his  precursors,  and  he  profited  by 
their  works.  A  Benedictine,  who  might  have  spent  his 


280  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

strength  to  better  advantage,  has  written  a  book  on  the 
Plagiarisms  of  J.  J.  Rousseau.1 

We  do  not  propose  to  treat  Rousseau  as  a  plagiarist,  for  he 
surely  has  inspiration  of  his  own,  and  his  own  boldness  in 
invention  ;  but  however  much  of  an  innovator  he  may  be,  he 
was  inspired  by  Montaigne,  by  Locke,  and  without  speaking 
of  those  great  masters  whom  he  often  imitated,  he  had  his 
immediate  predecessors,  whose  ideas  on  certain  points  are  in 
conformity  with  his  own. 

304.  THE  ABBE  DE  SAINT  PIERRE  (1658-1743).  —  Among 
the  precursors  of  Rousseau,  a  place  among  the  first  must  be 
assigned  to  the  Abbe"  de  Saint  Pierre,  a  dreamy,  fantastic 
spirit,  fitted  more  to  excite  curiosity  than  to  deserve  admir- 
ation, whom  Rousseau  himself  called  "a  man  of  great  pro- 
jects and  petty  views."  His  projects  in  fact  were  great, 
at  least  in  number.  Between  "  a  project  to  make  sermons 
more  useful,  and  a  project  to  make  roads  more  passable," 
there  came,  in  his  incoherent  and  varied  work,  several  pro- 
jects for  perfecting  education  in  general,  and  the  education 
of  girls  in  particular. 

The  dominant  idea  of  the  Abbe"  de  Saint  Pierre  is  his 
anxiety  in  behalf  of  moral  education.  In  proportion  as  we 
advance  towards  the  era  of  liberty,  we  shall  notice  a  grow- 
ing interest  in  the  development  of  the  moral  virtues. 

The  Abb£  de  Saint  Pierre  requires  of  man  four  essential 
qualities :  justice,  benevolence,  the  discernment  of  virtue  or 
judgment,  and,  lastly,  instruction,  which  holds  but  the  lowest 
rank.  Virtue  is  of  more  worth  than  the  knowledge  of  Latin. 

"  It  cannot  be  said  that  a  great  knowledge  of  Latin  is  not 
an  excellent  attainment ;  but  in  order  to  acquire  this  knowl- 

1  Dom  Joseph  Cajet,  Les  Plagiats  de  J.  J.  R.  de  Geneve  sur  I'^ducation, 
1768. 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  281 

edge,  it  is  necessary  to  give  to  it  an  amount  of  time  that 
would  be  incomparably  better  employed  in  acquiring  great 
skill  iu  the  observation  ofprudence.  Those  who  direct  edu- 
cation make  a  very  great  mistake  in  employing  tenfold  too 
much  time  iu  making  us  scholarly  in  the  Latin  tongue,  and 
iu  employing  tenfold  too  little  of  it  in  giving  us  a  confirmed 
use  of  prudence."1 

But  what  are  the  means  proposed  by  the  Abb6  de  Saint 
Pierre  ?  All  that  he  has  devised  for  organizing  the  teaching 
of  the  social  virtues  is  reduced  to  the  requirement  of  reading  \ 
edifying  narratives,  of  playing  moral  pieces,  and  of  accus- 
toming young  people  to  do  meritorious  acts  in  the  daily  inter- 
course of  the  school.  When  the  lessons  have  been  recited 
and  the  written  exercises  corrected,  the  teacher  will  sa}-  to 
the  pupil :  "  Do  for  me  an  act  of  prudence,  or  of  justice,  or 
of  benevolence."  This  is  easier  to  say  than  to  do.  College 
life  scarcely  furnishes  occasion  for  the  application  of  the 
social  virtues. 

But  the  Abb6  de  Saint  Pierre  should  be  credited  with  his 
good  intentions.  He  is  the  first  in  France  to  give  his  thought 
to  this  matter  of  professional  instruction.  The  mechanic 
arts,  the  positive  sciences,  the  apprenticeship  to  trades, — 
these  things  he  places  above  the  study  of  languages.  Around 
his  college,  and  even  in  his  college,  there  are  to  be  mills, 
printing  offices,  agricultural  implements,  garden  tools,  etc. 

AVas  it  not  also  an  idea  at  once  new  and  wise,  to  establish 
a  continuous  department  of  public  instruction,  a  sort  of  per- 
manent council,  charged  with  the  reformation  of  methods 
and  with  establishing,  as  far  as  possible,  uniformity  in  all 
the  colleges  of  the  kingdom? 

Finally,  we  shall  commend  the  Abb£  de  Saint  Pierre  for 
having  persistently  urged  the  necessity  of  the  education  of 

1  CEavres  diverses,  Tome  I.  p.  12. 


282  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

women.  From  Fenelon  to  the  Abbe"  de  Saint  Pierre,  from 
1680  to  1730,  great  progress  was  made  in  this  question.  We 
seem  already  to  hear  Condorcet  when  we  read  the  following 
passage  :  — 

"  The  purpose  should  be  to  instruct  girls  in  the  elements 
of  all  the  sciences  and  of  all  the  arts  which  can  enter  into 
ordinary  conversation,  and  even  in  several  things  which  re- 
late to  the  different  employments  of  men,  such  as  the  history 
of  their  country,  geography,  police  regulations,  and  the  prin- 
cipal civil  laws,  to  tlie  end  that  they  can  listen  with  pleasnr<  f<> 
what  men  shall  say  to  them,  ask  relevant  questions,  and  easily 
keep  up  a  conversation  with  their  husbands  on  the  daily 
occurrences  in  their  occupations." 

For  the  purpose  of  sooner  attaining  his  end,  the  Abb6  de 
Saint  Pierre,  anticipating  the  centuries,  demanded  for  women 
national  establishments,  colleges  of  secondary  instruction. 
He  did  not  hesitate  to  cloister  young  girls  in  boarding-schools, 
and  in  boarding-schools  without  vacations  ;  and  he  entreated 
the  State  to  organize  public  courses  for  those  who,  he  said, 
"  constitute  one-half  of  the  families  in  society." 

305.  OTHER  INSPIRERS  OF  ROUSSEAU.  —  With  the  eight- 
eenth century  there  begins  for  modern  thought,  in  education 
as  in  everything  else,  an  era  of  international  relations,  of 
mutual  imitation,  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  people  on 
people.  The  Frenchman  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  al- 
most absolutely  ignored  Comenius.  Rousseau  knows  Locke, 
and  also  the  Hollander  Croosaz,1  whom,  by  the  way.  he  treats 
rather  shabbily,  speaking  of  him  as  "the  pedant  Crousaz." 

Crousaz,  however,  had  some  good  ideas.  He  criticised 
the  old  methods,  which  make  "of  the  knowledge  of  Latin 

1  De  Vtducation  des  enfants,  la  Haye,  1722;  Penstes  libres  sur  les  in~ 
structions  publiques  des  bas  colleges,  Amsterdam,  1727. 


KOUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  283 

and  Greek  the  principal  part  of  education  "  ;  and  he  preached 
scientific  instruction  and  moral  education. 

In  the  Spectacle  of  Nature,  which  was  so  popular  in  its 
day,  the  Abbe"  Pluche  also  demanded  that  the  study  of  the    \ 
dead  languages  should  be  abridged 1 :  — 

"  Experience  with  the  pitiable  Latinity  which  reigns  in  the 
colleges  of  Germany,  Flanders,  Holland,  and  in  all  places 
where  the  habit  of  always  speaking  Latin  is  current,  suffices 
to  make  us  renounce  this  custom  which  prevents  a  young 
man  from  speaking  his  own  tongue  correctly." 

The  Abbe"  Pluche  demanded  that  the  time  saved  from 
Latin  be  devoted  to  the  living  languages.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  insisted  on  early  education,  and  on  this  point  he 
was  the  complement  to  his  master,  Rollin,  who,  he  said, 
wrote  rather  ' '  for  the  perfection  of  studies  than  for  their  / 
beginning." 

Still  other  writers  were  able  to  suggest  to  Rousseau  some 
of  the  ideas  which  he  developed  in  the  Ernile.     Before  him, 
La  Condamine  declared  that  the  Fables  of  La  Fontaine  are 
above  the  capacity  of  children.2     Before  him,  Bonneval,  much  \ 
interested  in  physical  education,  violently  criticised  the  use  of 
long  clothes,  and  claimed  for  children  an  education  of  the  7 
senses.     He  demanded,  besides,  that  in  early  instruction,  the 
effort  of  the  teacher  should  be  limited  to  the  keeping  of  evil 
impressions  from  the  childish  imagination,  and  that  instruc- 
tion in  the  truths  of  religion  should  be  held  in  abeyance. 

We  shall  discover  in  the  Emile  all  these  ideas  in  outline 
revived  and  developed  with  the  power  and  with  the  brilliancy 
of  genius,  sometimes  transformed  into  boisterous  paradoxes, 
but  sometimes,  also,  transformed  into  solid  and  lasting 
truths. 

1  Spectacle  de  la  nature,  Paris,  1732,  Vol.  VI.    Entretien  sur  I 'education. 

2  Lcttrc  critique  stir  I'tlducation,  Paris,  1751. 


284  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

306.  PUBLICATION  OF  THE  I£MILE  (1762).  —  Rousseau  has 
made  striking  statements  of  nearly  all  the  problems  of  edu- 
cation, and  he  has  sometimes  resolved   them  with  wisdom, 
and  always  with  originality. 

Appearing  in  1762,  at  the  moment  when  the  Parliament 
was  excluding  the  Jesuits  from  France,  the  Emile  came  at 
the  right  moment  in  that  grand  overthrow  of  routine  and 
tradition  to  disclose  new  hopes  to  humanity,  and  to  announce 
the  advent  of  philosophic  reason  in  the  art  of  educating  men. 
But  Rousseau,  in  writing  his  book,  did  not  think  of  the 
Jesuits,  of  whom  he  scarcely  speaks ;  he  wrote,  not  for  the 
man  of  the  present,  but  for  the  future  of  humanit}' ;  he  com- 
posed a  book  endowed  with  endless  vitality,  half .  romance, 
half  essay,  the  grandest  monument  of  human  thought  on  the 
subject  of  education.  The  Emile,  in  fact,  is  not  a  work  of 
ephemeral  polemics,  nor  simply  a  practical  manual  of  peda- 
gogy, but  is  a  general  system  of  education,  a  treatise  on 
psychology  and  moral  training,  a  profound  analysis  of  human 
nature. 

307.  WAS  ROUSSEAU  PREPARED  TO  BECOME  A  TEACHER? — 
Before  entering  upon  the  study  of  the  Emile,  it  is  well  to 
inquire  how  the  author  had  been  prepared  by  his  character 
and  by  his  mode  of  life  to  become  a  teacher.     The  history  of 
French  literature  offers  nothing  more  extraordinary  than  the 
life  of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau.     Everything  is  strange  in  the 
destiny   of   that   unfortunate   great   man.      Rousseau    com- 
mitted  great   faults,  especially  in  his  youth ;  but  at  other 
moments  of  his  life  he  is  almost  a  sage,  a  hero  of  private 
virtues  and  civic  courage.     He  traversed  all  adventures  and 
all  trades.     Workman,  servant,  charlatan,  preceptor,  all  in 
turn  ;  he  lodged  in  garrets  at  a  sou,  and  experienced  days 
when  he  complained  that  bread  was  too  dear.     Through  all 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  285 

these  miseries  and  these  humiliations  a  soul  was  in  process 
of  formation  made  up,  above  all  else,  of  sensibility  and 
imagination. 

Rousseau's  sensibility  was  extreme.  The  child  who, 
unjustly  treated,  experienced  one  of  those  violent  fits  of 
passion  which  he  has  so  well  described  in  his  Confessions, 
and  who  writhed  a  whole  night  in  his  bed,  crying  "  Carnifex, 
carnifex!"  was  surely  not  an  ordinary  child.  "I  had  no 
idea  of  things,  but  all  varieties  of  feeling  were  already 
known  to  me.  I  had  conceived  nothing ;  I  had  felt  every- 
thing." Even  a  mediocre  representation  of  Alzire  made  him 
beside  himself,  and  he  refused  witnessing  the  play  of  trage- 
dies for  fear  of  becoming  ill. 

The  sentiment  of  nature  early  inspired  him  with  a  passion 
which  was  not  to  be  quenched.  His  philosophic  optimism 
and  his  faith  in  providence  were  never  forgotten.  Other 
pure  and  generous  emotions  filled  his  soul.  The  study  of 
Plutarch  had  inspired  him  with  a  taste  for  republican  virtues 
and  with  an  enthusiasm  for  liberty.  Falsehood  caused  him 
a  veritable  horror.  He  had  the  feeling  of  equity  in  a  high 
degree.  Later,  to  the  hatred  of  injustice  there  was  joined  in 
his  heart  an  implacable  resentment  against  the  oppressors  of 
the  people.  He  had  doubtless  received  the  first  germ  of  this 
hate  when,  making  the  journey  afoot  from  Paris  to  Lyons, 
he  entered  the  cabin  of  a  poor  peasant,  and  there  found,  as 
in  a  picture,  the  affecting  summary  of  the  miseries  of  the 
people. 

At  the  same  time  he  was  an  insatiable  reader.  He  nour- 
ished himself  on  the  poets,  historians,  and  philosophers  of 
antiquity,  and  he  studied  the  mathematics  and  astronomy. 
As  some  one  has  said,  "  That  life  of  reading  and  toil,  inter- 
rupted by  so  many  romantic  incidents  and  adventurous 
undertakings,  had  vivified  his  imagination  as  a  regular  course 


286  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

of  study  in  the  College  of  Plessis  could  not  possibly  have 
done." 

It  is  in  this  way  that  his  literary  genius  was  formed,  and, 
in  due  order,  his  genius  for  pedagogy.  We  need  not  seek  in 
the  life  of  Rousseau  any  direct  preparation  for  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Smile.  It  is  true  that  for  a  time  he  had  been 
preceptor,  in  1739,  in  the  family  of  Mably,  but  he  soon 
resigned  duties  in  which  he  was  not  successful.  A  little 
essay  which  he  composed  in  1740  1  does  not  yet  give  proof 
of  any  great  originality.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  loved  to 
observe  children,  he  observed,  alas,  only  the  children  of 
others.  There  is  nothing  sadder  than  that  page  of  the  Confes- 
sions in  which  he  relates  how  he  often  placed  himself  at  the 
window  to  observe  the  dismission  of  school,  in  order  to  listen 
to  the  conversations  of  children  as  a  furtive  and  unseen 
observer  ! 

The  Emile  is  thus  less  the  result  of  a  patient  induction  and 
of  a  real  experience  than  a  work  of  inspiration  or  a  brilliant 
improvisation  of  genius. 

308.  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  £MILE. — A  certain 
number  of  general  principles  run  through  the  entire  work,  and 
give  it  a  systematic  form  and  a  positive  character. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  idea  of  the  innocence  and  of  the 
perfect  goodness  of  the  child.  The  Emile  opens  with  this 
solemn  declaration :  — 

"Everything  is  good  as  it  comes  from  the  hands  of  the 
Author  of  nature  ;  everything  degenerates  in  the  hands  of 
man."  And  in  another  place,  "  Let  us  assume  as  an  incon- 
testable maxim  that  the  first  movements  of  nature  are  always 
right ;  there  is  no  original  perversity  in  the  human  heart." 

Without  doubt  Rousseau  was  right  in  opposing  the  pessi- 

1  Projet  pour  I'dducation  de  M.  de  Ste-Marie. 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  287 

mism  of  those  who  see  in  the  child  a  being  thorough!}-  wicked 
and  degraded  before  birth  ;  he  is  deceived  in  turn  when  he 
affirms  that  there  is  no  germ  of  evil  in  human  nature. 

Society  is  wicked  and  corrupt,  he  says,  and  it  is  from 
society  that  all  the  evil  comes ;  it  is  from  its  pernicious 
influence  that  the  soul  of  the  child  must  be  preserved !  But, 
we  reply,  how  did  society  itself  happen  to  be  spoiled  and 
vitiated  ?  It  is  nothing  but  a  collection  of  men  ;  and  if  the 
individuals  are  innocent,  how  can  the  aggregate  of  individu- 
als be  wicked  and  perverse  ?  ,  But  let  the  contradictious  of 
Rousseau  pass ;  the  important  thing  to  note  is  that  from  his 
optimism  are  derived  the  essential  characteristics  of  the 
education  which  he  devises  for  Emile.  This  education  will 
be  at  once  natural  and  negative  :  — 

"Emile,"  says  Gr4ard,  "  is  a  child  of  nature,  brought  up 
by  nature,  according  to  the  rules  of  nature,  for  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  needs  of  nature.  This  sophism  is  not  merely  in- 
scribed at  random  on  the  frontispiece  of  the  book,  but  is  its 
very  soul ;  and  it  is  by  reason  of  this  sophistry  that,  sepa- 
rated from  the  body  of  reflections  and  maxims  that  give  it  so 
powerful  an  interest,  Rousseau's  plan  of  education  is  but  a 
dangerous  chimera." 

Everything  that  society  has  established,  Rousseau  con- 
demns in  a  lump  as  fictitious  and  artificial.  Conventional 
usages  he  despises  ;  and  he  places  Emile  at  the  school  of 
nature,  and  brings  him  up  almost  like  a  savage. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  education  of  Emile  is  negative,  at 
least  till  his  twelfth  year ;  that  is,  Rousseau  lets  nature  have 
her  way  till  then.  For  those  who  think  nature  evil,  educa- 
tion ought  to  bo  a  work  of  compression  and  of  repression. 
But  nature  is  good  ;  and  so  education  consists  simply  in  let- 
ting her  have  free  course.  To  guard  the  child  from  the  shock 
of  opinions,  to  form  betimes  a  defence  about  his  soul,  to 


288  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

assure  against  every  exterior  influence  the  free  development 
of  his  faculties — such  is  the  end  that  he  proposes  to  himself. 

Another  general  principle  of  the  Emtte,  another  truth 
which  Rousseau's  spirit  of  paradox  quickly  transforms  into 
error,  is  the  idea  of  the  distinction  of  ages :  — 

"Each  age,  each  state  of  life,  has  its  proper  perfection, 
and  a  sort  of  maturity  which  is  its  own.  We  have  often 
heard  of  a  man  grown  ;  but  let  us  think  of  a  child  grown. 
That  sight  will  be  newer  to  us,  and  perhaps  not  less  agree- 
able." 

"We  do  not  know  infancy.  With  the  false  ideas  we  have, 
the  further  we  go,  the  more  we  are  astray.  The  most  learned 
give  their  attention  to  that  which  it  is  important  for  men  to 
know  without  considering  what  children  are  in  a  condition  to 
comprehend.  They  always  look  for  the  man  in  the  child, 
without  thinking  of  what  he  was  before  he  became  a  man." 

"  Everything  is  right  so  far,  and  from  these  observations 
there  proceeds  a  progressive  education,  exactly  conforming 
in  its  successive  requirements  to  the  progress  of  the  faculties. 
But  Rousseau  does  not  stop  in  his  course,  and  he  goes  be- 
yond progressive  education  to  recommend  an  education  in 
fragments,  so  to  speak,  which  isolates  the  faculties  in  order 
to  develop  them  one  after  another,  which  establishes  an  abso- 
lute line  of  demarkation  between  the  different  ages,  and 
which  ends  in  distinguishing  three  stages  of  progress  in  the 
soul.  Rousseau's  error  on  this  point  is  in  forgetting  that 
the  education  of  the  child  ought  to  prepare  for  the  education 
of  the  young  man.  Instead  of  considering  the  different  ages 
as  the  several  rings  of  one  and  the  same  chain,  he  separates 
them  sharply  from  one  another.  He  does  not  admit  that 
marvellous  unity  of  the  human  soul,  which  seems  so  strong  in 
man  only  because  God  has,  so  to  speak,  woven  its  bands  into 
the  child  and  there  fastened  them."  (Gr6ard) . 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  289 

309.  ROMANTIC  CHARACTER  OF  THE  I£MILE.  —  A  final  ob- 
servation is  necessary  before  entering  into  an  analysis  of  the 
Emile  ;  it  is  that  in  this,  as  in  his  other  works,  Rousseau  is 
not  averse  to  affecting  singularities,  and  with  deliberation 
and  effrontery  to  break  with  received  opinions.  Doubtless  we 
should  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  with  certain  critics  that  the 
Emile  is  rather  the  feat  of  a  wit  than  the  serious  expression 
of  a  grave  and  serious  thought  ;  but  what  it  is  impossible 
not  to  grant  is  that  which  Rousseau  himself  admits  in  his 
preface  :  "  One  will  believe  that  he  is  reading,  not  so  much 
a  book  on  education  as  the  reveries  of  a  visionary."  Emile, 
in  fact,  is  an  imaginary  being  whom  Rousseau  places  in  strange  < 
conditions.  He  does  not  give  him  parents,  but  has  him 
brought  up  by  a  preceptor  in  the  country,  far  from  all  society. 
is  a  character  in  a  romance  rather  than  a  real  man. 


310.  DIVISION   OF  THE   WORK.  —  Without   doubt,   there 
are  in  the  Emile  long  passages  and  digressions  that  make  the 
reading  of  it  more  agreeable  and  its  analysis  more  difficult. 
But,  notwithstanding  all  this,  the  author  confines  himself  to 
a  methodical  plan,  at  least  to  a  chronological  order.     The 
different  ages  of  E^nile  serve  as  a  principle  for  the  division 
of  the  work.     The  first  two  books  treat  especially  of  the  in- 
fant and  of  the  earliest  period  of  life  up  to  the  age  of  twelve. 
The  only  question  here  discussed  is  the  education  of  the  body 
and  the  exercise  of  the  senses.     The  third  book  corresponds 
to  the  period  of  intellectual  education,  from  the  twelfth  to 
the  fifteenth  year.     In  the  fourth  book,  Rousseau  studies 
moral  education,  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  twentieth  year. 

Finally,  the  fifth  book,  in  which  the  romantic  spirit  is  still    • 
rampant,  is  devoted  to  the  education  of  woman. 

311.  THE  FIRST  Two  BOOKS  OF  THE  EMILE.  —  It  would  be 
useless  to  search  this  first  part  of  the  Emile  for  precepts  rela- 


290  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tive  to  the  education  of  the  mind  and  the  heart.  Rousseau 
has  purposely  eliminated  from  the  first  twelve  years  of  the 
child's  life  everything  which  concerns  instruction  and  moral 
discipline.  At  the  age  of  twelve,  l£mile  will  know  how  to 
run,  jump,  and  judge  of  distances ;  but  he  will  be  perfectly 
ignorant.  The  idea  would  be  that  he  has  studied  nothing  ac 
all,  and  "  that  he  has  not  learned  to  distinguish  his  right 
hand  from  his  left." 

The  exclusive  characteristic  of  Emile's  education,  during 
this  first  period,  is,  then,  the  preoccupation  with  physical 
development  and  with  the  training  of  the  senses. 

Out  of  many  errors,  we  shall  see  displayed  some  admirable 
flashes  of  good  sense,  and  grand  truths  inspired  by  the  prin- 
ciple of  nature. 

312.  LET  NATURE  HAVE  HER  WAY. — What  does  nature 
demand?  She  demands  that  the  child  have  liberty  of  move- 
ment, and  that  nothing  interfere  with  the  nascent  activities 
of  his  limbs.  What  do  we  do,  on  the  contrar}*?  We  put 
him  in  swaddling  clothes  ;  we  imprison  him.  He  is  deformed 
by  his  over-tight  garments, — the  first  chains  that  are  imposed 
on  a  being  who  is  destined  to  have  so  many  others  to  bear  ! 
On  this  subject,  the  bad  humor  of  Rousseau  does  not  tire. 
He  is  prodigal  in  outbreaks  of  spirit,  often  witty,  and  some- 
times ridiculous. 

"  It  seems,"  he  says,  "  as  though  we  fear  that  the  child 
may  appear  to  be  alive."  "Man  is  born,  lives,  and  dies,  in  a 
state  of  slavery  ;  at  his  birth  he  is  stitched  into  swaddling- 
clothes  ;  at  his  death  he  is  nailed  in  his  coffin  ;  and  as  long 
as  he  preserves  the  human  form  he  is  held  captive  by  our 
institutions." 

We  shall  not  dwell  on  these  extravagances  of  language 
which  transforms  a  coffin  and  a  child's  long-clothes  into  insli- 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  291 

tutions.  The  protests  of  Rousseau  have  contributed  towards 
a  reformation  of  usages  ;  but,  even  on  this  point,  with  his 
great  principle  that  everything  must  be  referred  to  nature, 
because  whatever  nature  does  she  does  well,  the  author  of 
Emile  is  on  the  point  of  going  astray.  No  more  for  the 
body  than  for  the  mind  is  nature  sufficient  in  herself ;  she  ) 
must  have  help  and  watchful  assistance.  Strong  supports 
are  needed  to  prevent  too  active  movements  and  dangerous 
strains  of  the  body  ;  just  as,  later  on,  there  will  be  needed  a 
vigorous  moral  authority  to  moderate  and  curb  the  passions 
of  the  soul. 

313.  THE  MOTHER  TO  NURSE  HER  OWN  CHILDREN.  —  But 
there  is  another  point  where  it  has  become  trite  to  praise 
Rousseau,  and  where  his  teaching  should  be  accepted  without 
reserve.  This  is  when  he  strongly  protests  against  the  use 
of  hired  nurses,  and  when  he  eloquently  summons  mothers 
to  the  duties  of  nursing  their  own  children.  Where  there  is 
no  mother,  there  is  no  child,  says  Rousseau,  and  he  adds, 
where  there  is  no  mother,  there  is  no  family  !  "  Would  you 
recall  each  one  to  his  first  duties?  Begin  with  the  mothers. 
You  will  be  astonished  at  the  changes  you  will  produce  ! " 
It  would  be  to  fall  into  platitudes  to  set  forth,  after  Rous- 
seau, and  after  so  many  others,  the  reasons  which  recom- 
mend nursing  by  the  mother.  We  merely  observe  that 
Rousseau  insists  on  this,  especially  on  moral  grounds.  It  is 
not  merely  the  health  of  the  child ;  it  is  the  virtue  and  the 
morality  of  the  family  ;  it  is  the  dignity  of  the  home,  that  he 
wishes  to  defend  and  preserve.  And,  in  fact,  how  many 
other  duties  are  provided  for  and  made  easier  by  the  per- 
formance of  a  primal  duty. 

314<,  HARDENING  OF  THE  BODY.  —  So  far,  the  lessons  of 
nature  have  instructed  Rousseau.  He  is  still  right  when  he 


292  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

wishes  ^mile  to  grow  hard}-,  to  become  inured  to  privations, 
to  become  accustomed  at  an  early  hour  to  pain,  and  to 
learn  how  to  suffer;  but  from  being  a  stoic,  Rousseau  soon 
becomes  a  cynic.  Contempt  for  pain  gives  place  to  a  con- 
tempt for  proprieties.  Emile  shall  be  a  barefoot,  like  Dioge- 
nes. Locke  gives  his  pupil  thin  shoes  ;  Rousseau,  surpassing 
him,  completely  abolishes  shoes.  He  would  also  like  to 
suppress  all  the  inventions  of  civilization.  Thus  £mile, 
accustomed  to  walk  in  the  dark,  will  do  without  candles. 
"  I  would  rather  have  ISmile  with  eyes  at  the  ends  of  his 
fingers  than  in  the  shop  of  a  candle-maker."  All  this  tempts 
us  to  laugh  ;  but  here  are  graver  errors.  Rousseau  objects 
to  vaccination,  and  proscribes  medicine.  3£mile  is  fore- 
handed. He  is  in  duty  bound  to  be  well.  A  physician  will 
be  summoned  only  when  he  is  in  danger  of  death.  Again, 
Rousseau  forbids  the  washing  of  the  new-born  child  in  wine, 
because  wine  is  a  fermented  liquor,  and  nature  produces 
nothing  that  is  fermented.  And  so  there  must  be  no  play- 
things made  by  the  hand  of  man.  A  twig  of  a  tree  or  a 
poppy-head  will  suffice.  Rousseau,  as  we  see,  by  reason  of 
his  wish  to  make  of  his  pupil  a  man  of  nature,  brings  him 
into  singular  likeness  with  the  wild  man,  and  assimilates 
him  almost  to  the  brute. 

315.  NEGATIVE  EDUCATION.  —  It  is  evident  that  the  first 
period  of  life  is  that  in  which  the  use  of  negative  education 
is  both  the  least  dangerous  and  the  most  acceptable.  Ordi- 
narily, Emile's  preceptor  will  be  but  the  inactive  witness, 
the  passive  spectator  of  the  work  done  by  nature.  Had 
Rousseau  gone  to  the  full  length  of  his  system,  he  ought  to 
have  abolished  the  preceptor  himself,  in  order  to  allow  the 
child  to  make  his  way  all  alone.  But  if  the  preceptor  is 
tolerated,  it  is  not  to  act  directly  on  fiinile,  it  is  not  to  per- 


ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   EMILE.  293 

form  the  duties  of  a  professor,  in  teaching  him  what  it  is 
important  for  a  child  to  know ;  but  it  is  simply  to  put  him  in 
the  way  of  the  discoveries  which  he  ought  to  make  for  himself 
in  the  wide  domain  of  nature,  and  to  arrange  and  to  combine, 
artificially  and  laboriously,  those  complicated  scenes  which 
are  intended  to  replace  the  lessons  of  ordinary  education. 
Such,  for  example,  is  the  scene  of  the  juggler,  where  Emile 
is  to  acquire  at  the  same  time  notions  on  physics  and  on 
ethics.  Such,  again,  is  the  conversation  with  the  gardener, 
Robert,  who  reveals  to  him  the  idea  of  property.  The  pre- 
ceptor is  no  longer  a  teacher,  but  a  mechanic.  The  true 
educator  is  nature,  but  nature  prepared  and  skillfully  ad- 
justed to  ser,ve  the  ends  that  we  propose  to  attain.  Rousseau 
admits  only  the  teaching  of  things  :  — 

'  •  Do  not  give  your  pupil  any  kind  of  verbal  lesson  ;  he 
should  receive  none  save  from  experience."  "The  most 
important,  the  most  useful  rule  in  all  education,  is  not  to 
gain  time,  but  to  lose  it." 

The  preceptor  will  interfere  at  most  only  by  a  few  timid 
and  guarded  words,  to  aid  the  child  in  interpreting  the  les- 
sons of  nature.  "State  questions  within  his  comprehension, 
and  leave  him  to  resolve  them  for  himself.  Let  him  not 
know  anything  because  you  have  told  it  to  him,  but  because 
he  has  comprehended  it  for  himself." 

'•  For  the  body  as  for  the  mind,  the  child  must  be  left  to 
himself." 

"  Let  him  run,  and  frolic,  and  fall  a  hundred  times  a  day. 
So  much  the  better  ;  for  he  will  learn  from  this  the  sooner  to 
help  himself  up.  The  welfare  of  liberty  atones  for  many 
bruises." 

In  his  horror  for  what  he  calls  "  the  teaching  and  pedantic 
mania,"  Rousseau  goes  so  far  as  to  proscribe  an  education 
in  habits  :  — 


294  THE  HISTOKY  OP  PEDAGOGY. 

"The  only  habit  that  a  child  should  be  allowed  to  form 
is  to  contract  no  habit." 

316.  THE  CHILD'S  RIGHT  TO  HAPPINESS.  —  Rousseau  did 
not  tire  of  demanding  that  we  should  respect  the  infancy  that 
is  in  the  child,  and  take  into  account  his  tastes  and  his  apti- 
tudes.    With  what  eloquence  he  claims  for  him  the  right  of 
being  happy  ! 

•  "Love childhood.  Encourage  its  sports,  its  pleasures,  and 
its  instinct  for  happiness.  Who  of  you  has  not  'sometimes 
regretted  that  period  when  a  laugh  was  always  on  the  lips, 
and  the  soul  always  in  peace?  Why  will  you  deny  those 
little  innocents  the  enjoyment  of  that  brief  period  which  is  so 
soon  to  escape  them,  and  of  that  precious  goocl  which  they 
cannot  abuse?  Why  will  you  fill  with  bitterness  and  sorrow 
those  first  years  so  quickly  passing  which  will  no  more  re- 
turn to  them  than  they  can  return  to  you  ?  Fathers,  do  you 
know  the  moment  when  death  awaits  your  children?  Do 
not  lay  up  for  yourselves  regrets  by  depriving  them  of  the 
few  moments  that  nature  gives  them.  As  soon  as  they  can 
feel  the  pleasure  of  existence,  try  to  have  them  enjoy  it,  and 
act  in  such  a  way  that  at  whatever  hour  God  summons  them 
they  may  not  die  without  having  tasted  the  sweetness  of 
living."  " 

317.  PROSCRIPTION  OF  INTELLECTUAL  EXERCISES.  —  Rous- 
seau rejects  from  the  education  of  £mile  all  the  intellectual 
exercises  ordinarily  employed.     He  proscribes  history  on  the 
pretext  that  Emile  cannot  comprehend  the  relations  of  events. 
He  takes  as  an  example  the  disgust  of  a  child  who  had  been 
told  the  anecdote  of  Alexander  and  his  physician :  — 

lk  I  found  that  he  had  an  unusual  admiration  for  the  cour- 
age, so  much  lauded,  of  Alexander.  But  do  you  know  in 
what  he  saw  that  courage?  Simply  in  the  fact  that  he 
swallowed  a  drink  that  had  a  bad  taste." 


KOUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMTLE.  295 

And  from  this  Rousseau  concludes  that  the  child's  intelli- 
gence is  not  sufficiently  open  to  comprehend  history,  and  that 
he  ought  not  to  learn  it.  The  paradox  is  evident.  Because 
Emile  is  sometimes  exposed  to  the  danger  of  falling  into 
errors  of  judgment,  must  he  be  denied  the  opportunity  of 
judging?  Similarly,  Rousseau  does  not  permit  the  study  of 
the  languages.  Up  to  the  age  of  twelve,  Emile  shall  know 
hut  one  language,  because,  till  then,  incapable  of  judging  and 
comprehending,  he  cannot  make  the  comparison  between 
other  languages  and  his  own.  Later,  from  twelve  to  fifteen, 
Rousseau  will  find  still  other  reasons  for  excluding  the  study  / 
of  the  ancient  languages.  And  it  is  not  only  history  and  the 
languages  ;  it  is  literature  in  general  from  which  Emile  is 
excluded  by  Rousseau.  No  book  shall  be  put  into  his  hands, 
not  even  the  Fables  of  La  Fontaine.  It  is  well  known  with 
what  resolution  Rousseau  criticises  The  Crow  and  the  Fox. 

318.  EDUCATION  or  THE  SENSES. — The  grand  preoccupa- 
tion of  Rousseau  is  the  exercise  and  development  of  the 
senses  of  his  pupil.  The  whole  theoiy  of  object  lessons,  and 
even  all  the  exaggerations  of  what  is  now  called  the  intuitive 
method,  are  contained  in  germ  in  the  Emile:  — 

"  The  first  faculties  which  are  formed  and  perfected  in  us 
are  the  senses.  These,  then,  are  the  first  which  should  be 
cultivated  ;  but  these  are  the  very  ones  that  we  forget  or  that 
we  neglect  the  most." 

Rousseau  does  not  consider  the  senses  as  wholly  formed 
by  nature  ;  but  he  makes  a  special  search  for  the  means  of 
forming  them  and  of  perfecting  them  through  education. 

"  To  call  into  exercise  the  senses,  is,  so  to  speak,  to  learn 
to  feel ;  for  we  can  neither  touch,  nor  see,  nor  hear,  except  as 
we  have  been  taught." 

Only,  Rousseau  is  wrong  in  sacrificing  everything  to  this 


296  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

education  of  the  senses.  He  sharply  criticises  this  favorite 
maxim  of  Locke,  tk  We  must  reason  with  children."  Rous- 
seau retards  the  education  of  the  judgment  and  the  reason, 
and  declares  that  "  he  would  as  soon  require  that  a  child  be 
five  feet  high  as  that  he  reason  at  the  age  of  eight." 

319.  THE  THIRD  BOOK  OF  THE  £MILE.  — From  the  twelfth 
to  the  fifteenth  year  is  the  length  of  time  that  Rousseau  has 
devoted  to  study  and  to  intellectual  development  proper.     It 
is  necessary  that  the  robust  animal,  "  the  roe-buck,"  as  he 
calls  £mile,  after  a  negative  and  temporizing  education  of 
twelve  years,  become  in  three  years  an  enlightened  intelli- 
gence.   As  the  period  is  short,  Rousseau  disposes  of  the  time 
for  instruction  with  a  miser's  hand.     Moreover,  Emile  is  very 
poorly  prepared  for  the  rapid  studies  which  are  to  be  im- 
posed on  him.     Not  having  acquired  in  his  earlier  years  the 
habit  of  thinking,  having  lived  a  purety  physical  existence,  he 
will  have  great  difficult}-  in  bringing  to  life,  within  a  few 
months,  his  intellectual  faculties. 

But  without  dwelling  on  the  unfavorable  conditions  of 
Smile's  intellectual  education,  let  us  see  in  what  it  will 
consist. 

320.  CHOICE  IN  THE  THINGS  TO  BE  TAUGHT.  —  The  princi- 
ple which  guides  Rousseau  in  the  choice  of  fimile's  studies 
is  no  other  than  the  principle  of  utility :  — 

"There  is  a  choice  in  the  things  which  ought  to  be  taught  as 
well  as  in  the  time  fit  for  learning  them.  Of  the  knowledges 
within  our  reach,  some  are  false,  others  are  useless,  and  still 
others  serve  to  nourish  the  pride  of  him  who  has  them.  Only 
the  small  number  of  those  which  really  contribute  to  our  good 
are  worthy  the  care  of  a  wise  man,  and  consequently  of  a 
child  whom  we  wish  to  render  such.  It  is  not  a  question  of 
knowing  what  is,  but  only  what  is  useful.}/" j  jjJ' 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  297 

321.  ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  ABBE  DE  SAINT  PIERRE.  —  Among 
educators,  some  wish  to  teach  everything,  while  others  de- 
mand  a  choice,   and  would  retain  only  what  is  necessary. 
The  Abbe"  de  Saint  Pierre  follows  the  first  tendency.     He 
would  have  the  scholar  learn  everything  at  college  :  a  little 
medicine   towards   the  seventh  or  eighth  year,   and  in   the 
other  classes,  arithmetic  and  blazonry,  jurisprudence,  Ger- 
man, Italian,  dancing,  declamation,  politics,  ethics,  astron- 
omy, anatomy,  chemistry,  without  counting  drawing  and  the 
violin,  and  twenty  other  things  besides.     Rousseau  is  wiser. 
He  is  dismayed  at  such  an  accumulation,  at  such  an  obstruc- 
tion of  studies,  and  so  yields  too  milch  to  the  opposite  ten- 
dency, and  restricts  beyond  measure  the  list  of  necessary 
studies. 

322.  SMILE'S  STUDIES.  —  These,  in  fact,  are  the  studies  to 
which  Emile  is  limited  :  first,  the  physical  sciences,  and,  at 
the  head  of  the  list,  astronomy,  then  geography,  geography 
taught  without  maps  and  by  means  of  travel :  — 

'•You  are  looking  for  globes,  spheres,  maps.  What 
machines!  Why  all  these  representations?  Why  not  begin 
by  showing  him  the  object  itself?" 

Here,  as  in  other  places,  Rousseau  prefers  what  would  be 
best,  but  what  is  impossible,  to  that  which  is  worth  less,  but 
which  alone  is  practicable. 

But  Rousseau  does  not  wish  that  his  pupil,  like  the  pupil  of 
Rabelais,  become  an  "  abyss  of  knowledge." 

"  When  I  see  a  man,  enamored  of  knowledge,  allow  him- 
self to  yield  to  its  charms,  and  run  from  one  kind  to  another 
without  knowing  where  to  stop,  I  think  I  see  a  child  on  the 
sea-shore  collecting  shells,  beginning  by  loading  himself  with 
them  ;  then,  tempted  by  those  he  still  sees,  throwing  them 
aside,  picking  them  up,  until,  weighed  down  by  their  number, 


298  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

and  no  longer  knowing  which  to  choose,  he  ends  by  rejecting 
everything,  and  returns  empi3'-handed." 

No  account  is  made  of  grammar  and  the  ancient  languages 
in  the  plan  of  Smile's  studies.  Graver  still,  history  is  pro- 
scribed. This  rejection  of  historical  studies,  moreover,  is 
systematically  done.  Rousseau  has  placed  £mile  in  the 
country,  and  has  made  him  an  orphan,  the  better  to  isolate 
him  ;  to  teach  him  history  would  be  to  throw  him  back  into 
society  that  he  abominates. 

323.  No  BOOKS  SAVE  ROBINSON  CRUSOE.  — One  of  the  con- 
sequences of  an  education  that  is  natural  and  negative  is  the 
suppression  of  books.     Always  going  to  extremes,  Rousseau 
is  not  content  to  criticise  the  abuse  of  books.     He  deter- 
mines that  up  to  his  fifth  year  £mile  shall  not  know  what  a 
book  is  :  — 

"  I  hate  books,"  he  exclaims  ;  "  they  teach  us  merely  to 
speak  of  things  that  we  do  not  know." 

Besides  the  fact  that  this  raving  is  rather  ridiculous  in  the 
case  of  a  man  who  is  a  writer  by  profession,  it  is  evident  that 
Rousseau  is  roving  at  random  when  he  condemns  the  use  of 
books  in  instruction. 

One  book,  however,  one  single  book,  has  found  favor  in 
his  sight.  Robinson  Crusoe  will  constitute  by  itself  for  a  long 
time  the  whole  of  Emile's  library.  We  understand  without 
difficulty  Rousseau's  kindly  feeling  for  a  work  which,  under 
the  form  of  a  romance,  is,  like  the  Emile,  a  treatise  on  natu- 
ral education.  Emile  and  Robinson  strongly  resemble  eacli 
other,  since  they  are  self-sufficient  and  dispense  with 
society. 

324.  EXCELLENT  PRECKPTS  ON  METHOD. — At  least  in  the 
general  method  which  he  commends,  Rousseau  makes  amends 
for  the  errors  in  his  plan  of  study  :  — 


ROUSSEATJ    AND   THE    EMILE.  299 

"Do  not  treat  the  child  to  discourses  which  he  cannot 
understand.  No  descriptions,  no  eloquence,  no  figures  of 
speech.  Be  content  to  present  to  him  appropriate  objects. 
Let  us  transform  our  sensations  into  ideas.  But  let  us  not 
jump  at  once  from  sensible  objects  to  intellectual  objects. 
Let  us  always  proceed  slowly  from  one  sensible  notion  to 
another.  In  general,  let  us  never  substitute  the  sign  for  the 
thing,  except  when  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  show  the 
thing." 

"  I  have  no  love   whatever   for   explanations   and    talk. 
Things  !  things  !  I  shall  never  tire  of  saying  that  we  ascribe 
too  much  importance  to  words.     With  our  babbling  education  j 
we  make  only  babblers." 

But  the  whole  would  bear  quoting.  Almost  all  of  Rous- 
seau's recommendations,  in  the  way  of  method,  contain  an 
element  of  truth,  and  need  only  to  be  modified  in  order  to 
become  excellent. 

325.  EXCLUSIVE  MOTIVES  OF  ACTION. — A  great  question 
in  the  education  of  children  is  to  know  to  what  motive  we 
shall  address  ourselves.  Here  again,  Rousseau  is  exclusive 
and  absolute.  Up  to  the  age  of  twelve,  Emile  will  have 
been  guided  by  necessity  ;  he  will  have  been  made  depend- 
ent on  things,  not  on  men.  It  is  through  the  possible  and 
the  impossible  that  he  will  have  been  conducted,  by  treating 
him.  not  as  a  sensible  and  intelligent  being,  but  as  a  force  of 
nature  against  which  other  forces  are  made  to  act.  Not  till 
the  age  of  twelve  must  this  system  be  changed.  £mile  has 
MOW  acquired  some  judgment ;  and  it  is  upon  an  intellectual 
motive  that  one  ought  now  to  count  in  regulating  his  con- 
d'lct.  This  motive  is  utility.  The  feeling  of  emulation  can- 
not be  employed  in  a  solitary  education.  Finally,  at  the 
age  of  fifteen,  it  will  be  possible  to  appeal  to  the  heart,  to 


300  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

feeling,  and  to  recommend  to  the  young  man  the  acts  we  set 
before  him,  no  longer  as  necessary  or  useful,  but  as  noble, 
good,  and  generous.  The  error  of  Rousseau  is  iu  cutting 
up  the  life  of  man  to  his  twentieth  }7ear  into  three  sharply 
defined  parts,  into  three  moments,  each  subordinated  to  a 
single  governing  principle.  The  truth  is  that  at  every  age 
an  appeal  must  be  made  to. all  the  motives  that  act  on  our 
will,  that  at  every  age,  necessity,  interest,  sentiment,  and 
finally,  the  idea  of  duty,  an  idea  too  often  overlooked  by 
Rousseau,  as  all  else  that  is-  derived  from  reason.  —  all  these 
motives  can  effectively  intervene,  in  different  degrees,  in  the 
education  of  man. 

326.  £MI,LE.  LEARNS  A  TRADE. — At  the  age  of  fifteen, 
Emile  will  know  nothing  of  history,  nothing  of  humanity, 
nothing  of  art  and  literature,  northing  of  God ;  but  he  will 
know  a  trade,  a  manual  trade.     By  this  means,  he  will  be 
sheltered  from  need  in  advance,  in  case  a  revolution  should 
strip  him  of  his  fortune. 

"•  We  are  approaching,"  says  Rousseau,  with  an  astonish- 
ing perspicacity,  l'  a  century  of  revolutions.  Who  can  give 
yon  assurance  of  what  will  then  become  of  you  ?  I  hold  it 
to  be  impossible  for  the  great  monarchies  of  Europe  to  last 
much  longer.  They  have  all  had  their  day  of  glory,  and 
every  State  that  dazzles  is  in  its  decline." 

We  have  previously  noticed,  in  studying  analogous  ideas  in 
(he  case  of  Locke,  for  what  other  reasons  Rousseau  made  of 
Emile  an  apprentice  to  a  cabinet-maker  or  a  carpenter. 

327.  E^IILE  AT  THE  AGE  OF  FIFTEEN.  —  Rousseau  takes 
comfort  in   the  contemplation  of  his  work,  and  he  pauses 
from  time  to  time  in  his  analyses  and  deductions,  to  trace 
the  portrait  of  his  pupil.     This  is  how  he  represents  him  at 
the  age  of  fifteen  :  — 


EOUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  301 

has  but  little  knowledge,  but  that  which  he  has  is 
really  his  own  ;  he  knows  nothing  by  halves.  In  the  small 
number  of  things  that  he  knows,  and  knows  well,  the  most 
important  is  that  there  are  many  things  which  he  does  not 
know,  but  which  he  can  some  day  learn  ;  that  there  are  many 
more  things  which  other  men  know,  but  which  he  will  never 
know  ;  and  that  there  is  an  infinity  of  other  things  which  no  _- 
man  will  ever  know.  He  has  a  universal  mind,  not  through 
actual  knowledge,  but  through  the  ability  to  acquire  it.  He 
has  a  mind  that  is  open,  intelligent,  prepared  for  everything, 
and,  as  Montaigne  says,  if  not  instructed,  at  least  capable 
of  being  instructed.  It  is  sufficient  for  me  that  he  knows 
how  to  find  the  ofichat  good  is  it?  with  reference  to  all  that 
he  does,  and  the  why?  of  all  that  he  believes.  Once  more. 

.v  object  is  not  at  all  to  give  him  knowledge,  but  to  teach  \ 
him  how  to  acquire  it  as  he  may  need  it,  to  make  him  esti- / 
mate  it  at  its  exact  worth,  and  to  make  him  love  truth  above/ ( 
everything  else.     With  this  method,  progress  is  slow ;  but 
there  are  no  false  steps,  and  no  danger  of  being  obliged  to 
retrace  one's  course." 

All  this  is  well ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  add  that  even  £mile 
has  faults,  great  faults.  To  mention  but  one  of  them,  but 
one  which  dominates  all  the  others,  he  sees  things  only  from 
the  point  of  view  of  utility,  and  he  would  not  hesitate,  for 
example,  "  to  give  the  Academy  of  Sciences  for  the  smallest 
bit  of  pastry."  » 

328.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SENSIBILITIES.  —  It  is  true  that 
Rousseau  finally  decides  to  make  of  Ernile  an  affectionate 
and  reasonable  being.  "  We  have  formed,"  he  says,  "  his 
body,  his  senses,  his  judgment ;  it  remains  to  give  him  a 
heart."  Rousseau,  who  proceeds  like  a  magician,  by  wave  of 
wand  and  clever  tricks,  flatters  himself  that  within  a  day's 


302  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

time  Emile  is  going  to  become  the  most  affectionate,  the 
most  moral,  and  the  most  religious  of  men. 

329.  THE  FOURTH  BOOK  OF  THE  £MILE. — The  develop- 
ment of  the  affectionate  sentiments,  the  culture  of  the  moral 
sentiment,  and  that  of  the  religious  sentiment,  such  is  the 
triple  subject  of  the  fourth  book,  —  vast  and  exalted  questions 
that  lend  themselves  to  eloquence  in  such  a  way  that  the 
fourth  book  of  the  Emile  is  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  of  the 
whole  work. 

330.  GENESIS  OF  THE  AFFECTIONATE  SENTIMENTS.  —  Here 
Rousseau   is  wholly  in  the  land  of  chimeras.     E^nile,  who 
lives  in  isolation,  who  has  neither  family,  friends,  nor  com- 
panions, is  necessarily  condemned  to  selfishness,  and  every- 
thing Rousseau  can  do  to  warm  his  heart  will  be  useless. 
Do  we  wish  to  develop  the  feelings  of  tenderness  and  affec- 
tion?    Let  us  begin  by  placing  the  child  under  family  or 
social  influences  which  alone  can  furnish  his   affections  the 
occasion  for  development.     For  fifteen  years  Rousseau  leaves 
the  heart  of  ISmile  unoccupied.     What  an  illusion  to  think 
he  will  be  able  to  fill  it  all  at  once !     When  we  suppress  the- 
mother  in  the  education  of  a  child,  all  the  means  that  we  can 
invent  to   excite   in    his    soul   emotions   of   gentleness  and 
affection  are  but  palliatives.     Rousseau  made  the  mistake  of 
thinking  that  a  child  can  be  taught  to  love  as  he  is  taught  to 
read  and  write,  and  that  lessons  could  be  given  to  3£mile  in 
feeling  just  as  lessons  are  given  to  him  in  geometry. 

331.  MORAL  EDUCATION. — Rousseau    is  more  worthy  of 
being  followed  when  he  demands  that  the  moral  notions  of 
right  and  wrong  have  their  first  source  in  the  feelings  of  sym- 
pathy and  social  benevolence,  on  the  supposition  that  accord- 
ing to  his  system  he  can  inspire  £mile  with  such  feelings. 


ROUSSEAU    AND   THE   EMILE.  803 

"  We  enter,  finally,  the  domain  of  morals,"  he  says.  "  If 
this  were  the  place  for  it,  I  would  show  how  from  the  first 
emotions  of  the  heart  arise  the  first  utterances  of  the  con- 
science, and  how,  from  the  first  feelings  of  love  and  hate 
arise  the  first  notions  of  good  and  evil.  I  would  make  it 
appear  that  justice  and  goodness  are  not  merely  abstract 
terms,  conceived  by  the  understanding,  but  real  affections 
of  the  soul  enlightened  by  the  reason." 

Yes  ;  let  the  child  be  made  to  make  his  way  gradually 
towards  a  severe  morality,  sanctioned  by  the  reason,  in 
having  him  pass  through  the  gentle  emotions  of  the  heart. 
Nothing  can  be  better.  But  this  is  to  be  done  on  one  condi- 
tion :  this  is,  that  we  shall  not  stop  on  the  way,  and  that  the 
vague  inspirations  of  the  sensibilities  shall  be  succeeded  by 
the  exact  prescriptions  of  the  reason.  Now  Rousseau,  as 
we  know,  was  never  willing  to  admit  that  virtue  was  anything 
else  than  an  affair  of  the  heart.  His  ethics  is  wholly  an 
ethics  of  sentiment. 

332.  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION.  — We  know  the  reasons  which 
determined  Rousseau  to  delay  till  the  sixteenth  or  eighteenth 
year  the  revelation  of  religion.  It  is  that  the  child,  with  his 
sensitive  imagination,  is  necessarily  an  idolater.  If  we 
speak  to  him  of  God,  he  can  form  but  a  superstitious  idea  of 
him.  "Now,"  says  Rousseau,  pithily,  "when  the  imagina- 
tion has  once  seen  God,  it  is  very  rare  that  the  understanding 
conceives  him."  In  other  terms,  once  plunged  in  supersti- 
tion, the  mind  of  the  child  can  never  extricate  itself  from  it. 
We  must  then  wait,  in  the  interest  of  religion  itself,  till  the 
child  have  sufficient  maturity  of  reason  and  sufficient  power 
of  thought  to  seize  in  its  truth,  divested  of  every  veil  of 
sense,  the  idea  of  God,  whose  existence  is  announced  to  him 
for  the  first  time. 


304  THE    HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  difficult  to  justify  Rousseau.  First,  is  it  not  to  be 
feared  that  the  child,  if  he  has  reached  his  eighteenth  year  in 
ignorance  of  God,  may  find  it  wholly  natural  to  be  ignorant 
of  him  still,  and  that  he  reason  and  dispute  at  random  with 
his  teacher,  and  that  he  doubt  instead  of  believe?  And  if 
he  allows  himself  to  be  convinced,  is  it  not  at  least  evident 
that  the  religious  idea,  tardily  inculcated,  will  have  no  pro- 
found hold  on  his  mind?  On  the  other  hand,  will  the  child, 
with  his  instinctive  curiosity,  wait  till  his  eighteenth  year  to 
inquire  the  cause  of  the  universe?  Will  he  not  form  the 
notion  of  a  God  in  his  own  way  ? 

"  One  might  have  read,  a  few  years  ago,"  says  Villemain, 
-'the  account,  or  rather  the  psychological  confession,  of  a 
writer  (Sentenis),  a  German  philosopher,  whom  his  father 
had  submitted  to  the  experiment  advised  by  the  author  of 
Emile.  Left  alone  by  the  loss  of  a  tenderly  loved  wife,  this 
father,  a  learned  and  thoughtful  man,  had  taken  his  infant 
son  to  a  retired  place  in  the  country ;  and  not  allowing  him 
communication  with  any  one,  he  had  cultivated  the  child's 
intelligence  through  the  sight  of  the  natural  objects  placed 
near  him,  and  by  the  study  of  the  languages,  almost  without 
books,  and  in  carefully  concealing  from  him  all  idea  of  God. 
The  child  had  reached  his  tenth  year  without  having  either 
read  or  heard  that  great  name.  But  then  his  mind  found 
what  had  been  denied  it.  The  sun  which  he  saw  rise  rach 
morning  seemed  the  all-powerful  benefactor  of  whom  he  felt 
the  need.  He  soon  formed  the  habit  of  going  at  dawn  to  the 
garden  to  pay  homage  to  that  god  that  he  had  made  for 
himself.  His  father  surprised  him  one  day.  and  showed  him 
his  error  by  teaching  him  that  all  the  fixed  stars  are  so  many 
suns  distributed  in  space.  But  such  was  then  the  disap- 
pointment and  the  grief  of  the  child  deprived  of  his  worship, 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  305 

that  the  father,  overcome,  acknowledged  to  him  that  there 
was  a  God,  the  Creator  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth."1 

333.  THE    SAVOYARD    VICAR'S    PROFESSION  OF   FAITH.  — 
Rousseau  has  at  least  attempted  to  retrieve,  by  stately  lan- 
guage and  an  impassioned  demonstration  of  the  existence  of 
God,  the  delay  which  he  has  spontaneously  imposed  on  his 
pupil. 

The  Savoyard  Vicar's  Profession  of  Faith  is  an  eloquent 
catechism  on  natural  religion,  and  the  honest  expression  of  a 
sincere  and  profound  deism.  The  religion  of  nature  is  evi- 
dently the  only  one  which,  in  Rousseau's  system,  can  be 
taught,  and  ought  to  be  taught,  to  the  child,  since  the  child  is 
exactly  the  pupil  of  nature.  If  3£rnile  wishes  to  go  beyond 
this,  if  he  needs  a  positive  religion,  this  shall  be  for  himself 
to  choose. 

334.  SOPHIE  AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN.  —  The  weak- 
est part  of  the  Emile  is  that  which  treats  of  the  education  of 
woman.     This    is  not   merely    because    Rousseau,  with   his 
decided  leaning  towards  the  romantic,  leads  £mile  and  his 
companion  into  odd  and  extraordinary  adventures,  but  it  is 
especially  because  he  misconceives  the   proper   dignity  of 
woman.     Sophie,  the  perfect  woman,  has  been  educated  only 
to  complete  the  happiness  of  £mile.     Her  education  is  wholly 
relative  to  her  destiny  as  a  wife. 

"The  whole  education  of  women  should  be  relative  to  men  ; 
to  please  them,  to  be  useful  to  them,  to  make  themselves 
honored  and  loved  by  them,  to  educate  tha  young,  to  care  for 
the  older,  to  advise  them,  to  console  them,  to  make  life  agree- 
able and  sweet  to  them,  —  these  are  the  duties  of  women  in 
every  age." 

1  Report  of  Villemain  on  the  work  of  the  Pere  Girard  (1844). 


306  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

"Sophie,"  says  Gre"ard,  "  has  but  virtues  of  the  second 
order,  virtues  of  conjugal  education."  It  has  been  said  that 
marriage  is  a  second  birth  for  man,  that  he  rises  or  falls 
according  to  the  choice  which  he  makes.  For  woman,  ac- 
cording to  the  theory  of  Rousseau,  it  is  the  true  advent  into 
life.  According  to  the  expressive  formula  of  Michelet,  who, 
in  a  sentence,  has  given  a  marvellous  summary  of  the  doc- 
trine, but  in  attaching  to  it  a  sense  which  poetizes  it,  "  the 
husband  creates  the  wife."  Sophie,  up  to  the  day  of  her 
marriage,  did  not  exist.  She  had  learned  nothing  and  road 
nothing  "  except  a  Bareme  and  a  Telemaque  which  have 
chanced  to  fall  into  her  hands."  She  has  been  definitely 
admonished,  "that  were  men  sensible,  every  lettered  girl 
will  remain  a  girl."  It  is  iSniile  alone  who  is  to  instruct  her, 
and  he  will  instruct  her  and  mould  her  into  his  own  ideal, 
and  in  conformity  to  his  individual  interest. 

"NYlvile  it  was  onh*  in  his  youth  that  he  received  the  first 
principles  of  the  religious  feeling,  Sophie  must  be  penetrated 
with  it  from  infancy,  in  order  that  she  may  early  form  the 
habit  of  submission.  He  commands  aud  she  obeys,  the  first 
duty  of  the  wife  being  meekness.  If,  during  her  youth,  she 
has  freely  attended  banquets,  amusements,  balls,  the  theatre, 
it  is  not  so  much  to  be  initiated  into  the  vain  pleasures  of 
the  world,  under  the  tutelage  of  a  vigilant  mother,  as  to  be- 
long, once  married,-  more  fully  to  her  home  and  to  her 
husband.  She  is  nothing  except  as  she  is  by  his  side,  or  as 
dependent  on  him,  or  as  acting  through  him.  Strange  and 
brutal  paradox,  which  Rousseau,  it  is  true,  corrects  and 
repairs  in  detail,  at  every  moment  by  the  most  happy  and 
charming  inconsistencies." 

Sophie,  briefly,  is  an  incomplete  person  whom  Rousseau  is 
not  careful  enough  to  educate  for  herself. 

In  her  subordinate  and  inferior  position,  the  cares  of  the 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   E.MILE.  807 

household  occupy  the  largest  place.  She  cuts  and  makes 
her  own  dresses  :  — 

"  What  Sophie  knows  best,  and  what  was  taught  her  with 
most  care,  is  the  work  of  her  sex.  There  is  no  needle-work 
which  she  does  not  know  how  to  make." 

It  is  not  forbidden  her,  but  is  even  recommended  that  she 
introduce  a  certain  coquetry  into  her  employments  :  — 

"The  work  she  loves  the  best  is  lace-making,  because 
there  is  no  other  that  gives  her  a  more  agreeable  attitude, 
and  in  which  the  fingers  are  used  with  more  grace  and 
deftness." 

She  carries  daintiness  a  little  too  far  :  — 

"  She  does  not  love  cooking  ;  its  details  have  some  disgust 
for  her.  She  would  sooner  let  the  whole  dinner  go  into  the 
fire  than  to  soil  her  cuffs." 

Truly  this  is  fine  housewifery  !  We  feel  that  we  have  here 
to  do  with  a  character  in  a  romance  who  has  no  need  to  dine. 
Sophie  would  not  have  been  well  received  at  Saint  Cyr,  whore 
Madame  de  Maintenon  so  severely  scolded  the  girls  who  were 
too  fastidious,  "fearing  smoke,  dust,  and  disagreeable  odors, 
even  to  making  complaints  and  grimaces  on  their  account  as 
though  all  were  lost." 

335.  GENERAL  CONCLUSION.  —  In  order  to  form  a  just  esti- 
mate of  the  Emtte,  it  is  necessary  to  put  aside  the  impressions 
left  by  the  reading  of  the  last  pages.  We  must  consider  as 
a  whole,  and  without  taking  details  into  account,  that  work, 
which,  notwithstanding  all,  is  very  admirable  and  profound. 
It  is  injured  by  analysis.  To  esteem  the  Emile  at  its  real 
worth,  it  must  be  read  entire.  In  reading  it,  in  fact,  we  are 
warmed  by  contact  with  the  passion  which  Rousseau  puts  into 
whatever  he  writes.  We  pardon  his  errors  and  chimeras  by 
reason  of  the  grand  sentiments  and  the  grand  truths  which 
we  meet  at  every  step.  We  must  also  take  into  account  the 


308  THE   H1STOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

* 

time  when  Rousseau  lived,  and  the  conditions  under  which  he 
wrote.  We  have  not  a  doubt  that  had  it  been  written  thirty 
years  later,  in  the  dawn  of  the  Revolution,  for  a  people  who 
were  free,  or  who  desired  to  be  free,  the  Emile  would  have 
been  wholly  different  from  what  it  is.  Had  he  been  working 
for  a  republican  society,  or  for  a  society  that  wished  to  become 
such,  Rousseau  would  not  have  thrown  himself,  out  of 
hatred  for  the  reality,  into  the  absurdities  of  an  over-spe- 
cialized and  exceptional  education.  We  can  judge  of  what 
he  would  have  done  as  legislator  of  public  instruction  in  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  by  what  he  wrote  in  his  Considerations 
on  the  Government  of  Poland :  — 

"  National  education  belongs  only  to  people  who  are 
free.  ...  It  is  education  which  is  to  give  to  men  the  national 
mould,  and  so  to  direct  their  opinions  and  their  tastes  that 
they  will  become  patriots  by  inclination,  by  passion,  and  by 
necessity"  (we  would  only  add,  by  duty).  "A  child,  in 
opening  his  eyes,  ought  to  see  his  country  and  nothing  but 
his  country.  Every  true  republican,  along  with  his  mother's 
milk,  will  imbibe  love  of  countiy,  that  is,  of  law  and  liberty. 
This  love  constitutes  his  whole  existence.  He  sees  but  his 
country,  he  lives  but  for  her.  So  soon  as  he  is  alone,  he  is 
nothing ;  so  soon  as  there  is  no  more  of  country,  he  is  no 
more.  .  .  .  While  learning  to  read,  I  would  have  a  child  of 
Poland  read  what  relates  to  his  country  ;  at  the  age  of  ten,  I 
would  have  him  know  all  its  productions ;  at  twelve,  all  its 
provinces,  all  its  roads,  all  its  cities  ;  at  fifteen,  the  whole  of 
its  history  ;  and  at  sixteen,  all  its  laws  ;  and  there  should  not 
be  in  all  Poland  a  notable  deed  or  an  illustrious  man,  of  which 
his  memory  and  his  heart  were  not  full." 

336.  INFLUENCE  OP  THE  £MILE.  —  That  which  proves 
better  than  any  commentary  can  the  high  standing  of  the 
JEmile,  is  the  success  which  it  has  obtained,  the  influence 


EOUSSEAU   AND   THE   EMILE.  309 

which  it  has  exerted,  both  in  France  and  abroad,  and  the 
durable  renown  attested  by  so  many  works  designed,  either 
to  contradict  it,  to  correct  it,  or  to  approve  it  and  to  dis- 
seminate its  doctrines.  During  the  twenty-five  years  that 
followed  the  publication  of  the  Emile,  there  appeared  in  the 
French  language  twice  as  many  books  on  education  as  dur- 
ing the  first  sixty  years  of  the  century.  Rousseau,  besides 
all  that  he  said  personally  which  was  just  and  new,  had  the 
merit  of  stimulating  minds  and  of  preparing  through  his 
impulsion  the  rich  educational  harvest  of  this  last  one  hun- 
dred years. 

To  be  convinced  of  this,  it  suffices  to  read  this  judgment 
of  Kant :  — 

"  The  first  impression  which  a  reader  who  does  not  read 
for  vanity  or  for  killing  time  derives  from  the  writings  of 
Rousseau,  is  that  this  writer  unites  to  an  admirable  penetra- 
tion of  genius  a  noble  inspiration  and  a  soul  full  of  sensi- 
bility, such  fts  has  never  been  met  with  in  any  other  writer, 
in  any  other  time,  or  in  any  other  country.  The  impression 
which  immediately  follows  this,  is  that  of  astonishment 
caused  by  the  extraordinary  and  paradoxical  thoughts  which 
he  develops.  ...  I  ought  to  read  and  re-read  Rousseau, 
till  the  beauty  of  his  style  no  more  affects  me.  It  is  only 
then  that  I  can  adjust  my  reason  to  judge  of  him." 

[337.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  study  of  the  Emile 
exhibits,  in  a  very  striking  manner,  the  contrast  between  the 
respective  agencies  of  art  and  nature  in  the  work  of  educa- 
tion, and  also  the  power  of  sentiment  as  a  motor  to  ideas. 

2.  What  Monsieur  Compayre1  has  happily  called  Rous- 
seau's "  misuse  of  the  principle  of  nature"  marks  a  recoil 
against  the  artificial  and  fictitious  state  of  society  and  opinion 
in  France  in  the  eighteenth  century.  In  politics,  in  religion, 
and  in  philosophy,  there  was  the  domination  of  authority,  and 


310  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY 

but  a  small  margin  was  left  for  the  exercise  of  freedom, 
versatility,  and  individual  initiative ;  while  education  was 
administered  rather  as  a  process  of  manufacture,  than  of 
regulated  growth. 

3.  The  conception  that  the  child,  by  his  very  constitution, 
is  predetermined,  like  plants  and  animals,  to  a  progressive 
development  quite  independent  of  artificial  aid,  easily  degen- 
erates into  the  hypothesis  that  the  typical  education  is  a 
process  of  spontaneous  growth. 

4.  The  error  in  this  hypothesis  is  that  of  exaggeration  or 
of  disproportion.     Education  is  neither  a  work  of  nature 
alone,  nor  of  art  alone,  but  is  a  natural  process,  supple- 
mented,  controlled,   and   perfected   by  human    art.     What 
education  would  become  when  abandoned  wholly  to  "  nature  " 
may  be  seen  in  the  state  of  a  perfected  fruit  which  has  been 
allowed  to  revert  to  its  primitive  or  natural  condition. 

5.  Man  is  distinguished  from  all  other  creatures  by  the 
/    fact  that  he  is  not  the  victim  of  his  environment,  but  is  en- 
dowed with  the  power  to  control  his  environment,  almost  to 
re-create  it,  and  so  to  rise  superior  to  it.     This  ability  gives 
rise  to  human  art,  which  is  a  coordinate  factor  with  nature 
in  the  work  of  education. 

G.  This  convenient  fiction  of  "Nature,"  conceived  as  an 
infallible  and  incomparable  guide  in  education,  has  intro- 
duced countless  errors  into  educational  theory  ;  and  Miss  E.  R. 

/  Sill  is  amply  justified  in  saying  that  u  probably  nine-tenths 
of  the  popular  sophistries  on  the  subject  of  education,  would 

\  be  cleared  away  by  clarifying  the  word  Nature."1 

7.  In  spite  of  its  paradoxes,  its  exaggerations,  its  over- 
wrought sentiment,  and  florid  declamation,  the  Emile,  in  its 
general  spirit,  is  a  work  of  incomparable  power  and  of  per- 
ennial value.] 

i  Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1883,  p.  178. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE   PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

CONDILLAC,  DIDEROT,  HELVETIUS,  AND   KANT. 

THE  PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY;  CONDILLAC  (1715- 
1780);  ABUSE  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHIC  SPIRIT;  MUST  WE  REASON 
WITH  CHILDREN?  PRELIMINARY  LESSONS;  THE  ART  OF  THINK- 
ING ;  OTHER  PARTS  OF  THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY  J  PERSONAL 
REFLECTION;  EXCESSES  OF  DEVOTION  CRITICISED;  DIDEROT  (1713- 
1784)  ;  HIS  PEDAGOGICAL  WORKS  ;  HIS  QUALITIES  AS  AN  EDUCA- 
TOR ;  NECESSITY  OF  INSTRUCTION;  IDEA  OF  A  SYSTEM  OF  PUBLIC 
INSTRUCTION;  CRITICISM  OF  FRENCH  COLLEGES;  PROPOSED  RE- 
FORMS ;  PREFERENCE  FOR  THE  SCIENCES  ;  INCOMPLETE  VIEWS 

ON  THE  PROVINCE  OF  LETTERS;  OPINION  OF  MARMONTEL ;  OTHER 
NOVELTIES  OF  DIDEROT'S  PLAN;  HELVETIUS  (1715-1771);  PARADOXES 
OF  THE  TREATISE  ON  MAN  ;  REFUTATION  OF  HELVETIUS  BY 
DIDEROT;  INSTRUCTION  SECULARIZED;  THE  ENCYCLOPAEDISTS;  KANT 
(1724-1804);  HIGH  CONCEPTION  OF  EDUCATION;  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OP- 
TIMISM; RESPECT  FOR  THE  LIBERTY  OF  THE  CHILD;  CULTURE  OF 

THE  FACULTIES  J  STORIES  INTERDICTED  J  DIFFERENT  KINDS  OF 
PUNISHMENT;  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


338.  THE  PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. — 
If  there  has  been  considerable  progress  made  in  education  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  it  is  due,  in  great  part,  to  the  efforts 
of  the  philosophers  of  that  age.  It  is  no  longer  alone  the 
men  who  are  actually  engaged  in  the  schools  that  are  pre- 
occupied with  education ;  but  nearly  all  the  illustrious 
thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century  have  discussed  these  great 
questions  with  more  or  less  thoroughness.  The  subject  is 
far  from  being  exhausted  by  the  study  of  Rousseau.  Besides 
the  educational  current;  set  in  movement  by  the  Emile,  the 
other  philosophers  of  that  period,  in  their  isolated  and  inde- 


312  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

pendent  inarch,  left  original  routes  which  it  remains  to  fol- 
low. From  out  their  errors  and  conceptions  of  systems  there 
emerge  some  new  outlooks  and  some  definite  truths. 

339.  CONDILLAC  (1715-1780).  —  An  acute  and  ingenious 
psychologist,  a  competitor  and  rival  of  Locke  in  philosophy, 
Condillac  is  far  from  having  the  same  authorit}'  in  matters 
pertaining  to  education  ;  but  still  there  is  profit  to  be  derived 
from  the  reading  of  his  Course  of  Study,  which  includes  not 
less  than  thirteen  volumes.     This  important  work  is  a  collec- 
tion of  the  lessons  which  he  had  composed  for  the  education 
of  the  infant  Ferdinand,  the   grandson  of  Louis  XV.,  and 
heir  of  the  dukedom  of  Parma,  whose  preceptor  he  became 
in  1757. 

340.  ABUSE  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHIC  SPIRIT.  —  It  is  certainly 
a  matter  of  congratulation  that  the    philosophical  spirit  is 
entering  more  and  more  largely  into  the  theories  of  educa- 
tion, and  there  would  be  only  words  of  commendation  for 
(Condillac  had  he  restricted  himself  to  this  excellent  declara- 
tion, that  pedagogy  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  a  deduction  from 
psychology.     But  he  does  not  stop  there,  but  with  an  indis- 
cretion that  is  to  be  regretted,  he  arbitrarily  transports  into 
education  certain    philosophical   principles  which  it  is  not 
proper  to  apply  to  the  art  of  educating  men,  whatever  may 
be  their  theoretical  truth  ;  thus  Condillac,  having  established 
the  natural  order  of  the  development  of  the  sciences  and  the 
arts  in  the  history  of  humanity,  presumes  to  impose  the  same 
law  of  progress  upon  the  child. 

"  The  method  which  I  have  followed  does  not  resemble  the 
usual  manner  of  teaching ;  but  it  is  the  very  way  in  which 
men  were  led  to  create  the  arts  and  the  sciences."  ] 

1  Discours  preliminaire  sur  la  yrammaire,  in  the  (Euvres  completes  of 
Condillac,  Tome  VI.  p.  264. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF    THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY.      313 

In  other  tei'ms,  the  child  must  do  over  again,  on  his  own 
account,  '•  that  which  the  race  has  done."  He  must  be  com- 
pelled to  follow,  step  by  step,  in  its  long  gropings,  the  slow 
progress  made  by  the  race.1 

There  is,  doubtless,  an  element  of  truth  in  the  error  of\ 
Condillac.  The  sciences  and  the  arts  began  with  the  obser- 
vation of  particulars,  and  thence  slowly  rose  to  general  prin- 
ciples ;  and  to-day  no  one  thinks  of  denying  the  necessity  of 
proceeding  in  the  same  manner  in  education,  so  far  as  this  is 
possible.  It  is  well  at  the  first  to  present  facts  to  the  child, 
and  to  lead  him  step  by  step,  from  observation  to  observation, 
to  the  law  which  governs  them  and  includes  them  ;  but  there  is 
a  wide  distance  between  the  discreet  use  of  the  inductive  and 
experimental  method,  and  the  exaggerations  of  Condillac. 
No  one  should  seriously  think  of  absolutely  suppressing  the 
synthetic  method  of  exposition,  which,  taking  advantage  of 
the  work  accomplished  through  the  centuries,  teaches  at  the 
outset  the  truths  that  have  been  already  acquired.  It  would 
be  absurd  to  compel  the  child  painfully  to  recommence  the 
toil  of  the  race.2 


1  This  is  also  the  main  principle  in  Mr.  Spencer's  educational  philosophy. 
"  The  education  of  the  child  must  accord  both  in  mode  and  arrangement 
with  the  education  of  mankind   as   considered  historically  ;    or,  in  other 
words,  the  genesis  of  knowledge  in  the  individual  must  follow  the  same 
course  as  the  genesis  of  knowledge  in  the  race."  — Education,  p.  122.  (P.) 

2  The  general  law  of  human  progress  is  inheritance  supplemented  by 
individual  acquisition.     Using  the  symbols  i  (inheritance)  and  a  (acqui- 
sition), the  progress  of  the  race  from  its  origin  upwards,  through  successive 
generations,  may  be  exhibited  by  this  series:  i ;  i  +  a;  i  (2a)  +  a;  i  (3  a)  +a; 
i(ia)+a.    If  the  factor  of  inheritance  could  be  eliminated,  as  Condillac 
and  Spencer  recommend,  the  series  would  take  this  form:  a'  ;  a"  ;  a'"; 
f(iv  ;  ov  :  the  successive  increments  in  acquisition  being  due  to  successive 
increments  in  power  gained  through  heredity.     But,  happily,  the  law  of  in- 
heritance cannot  be  abrogated,  and  so  philosophers  write  books  in  order  to 
save  succeeding  generations  from  the  fate  of  Sisyphus.  (P.) 


314  THE  HISTOEY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

Graver  still,  Condillac,  led  astray  by  his  love  for  philoso- 
phizing, presumes  to  initiate  the  child,  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  his  studies,  into  psychological  analysis. 

"  The  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  make  the  child  acquainted 
with  the  faculties  of  his  soul,  and  to  make  him  feel  the  need 
of  making  use  of  them." 

In  other  terms,  the  analysis  of  the  soul  shall  be  the  first 
object  proposed  to  the  reflection  of  the  child.     It  is  not 
'  proposed  to  make  him  attentive,  but  to   teach   him  what 
•  attention  is. 

How  can  one  seriously  think  of  making  of  the  child  a  little 
psychologist,  and  of  choosing  as  the  first  element  of  his  edu- 
>    cation  the  very  science  that  is  the  most  difficult  of  all,  the 
one  which  can  be  but  the  coronation  of  his  studies? 

341.  MUST  WE  REASON  WITH  CHILDREN?  —  Rousseau  had 
sharply  criticised  the  famous  maxim  of  Locke  :  "We  must 
reason  with  children."  Condillac  tries  to  restore  it  to  credit, 
and  for  this  purpose  he  invokes  the  pretended  demonstra- 
tions of  a  superficial  and  inexact  psychology. 

"It  has  been  proved,"  he  says,  "that  the  faculty  of 
reasoning  begins  as  soon  as  the  senses  commence  to  de- 
velop ;  and  we  have  the  earl}-  use  of  our  senses  only  because 
we  early  began  to  reason."  Strange  assertions,  which  are 
disproved  by  the  most  elementary  observation  of  the  facts  in 
the  case.  Coudillac  here  allows  himself  to  be  imposed  upon 
by  his  sensational  psychology,  the  tendency  of  which  is  to 
efface  the  peculiar  character  of  the  different  intellectual 
faculties,  to  derive  them  all  from  the  senses,  and,  conse- 
quently, to  suppress  the  distance  which  separates  a  simple 
sensation  from  the  subtile,  reflective,  and  abstract  process 
which  is  called  reasoning.  It  cannot  be  admitted  for  a 
single  instant  that  the  faculties  of  the  understanding  are.  as 
he  says,  "the  same  in  the  child  as  in  the  mature  man." 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.      315 

There  is,  doubtless,  in  the  child  a  beginning  of  reasoning,  a 
sort  of  instinctive  logic  ;  but  this  infantile  reasoning  can  be 
applied  only  to  familiar  objects,  such  as  are  sensible  and 
concrete.  It  were  absurd  to  employ  it  on  general  and  ab- 
stract ideas. 

342.  PRELIMINARY    LESSONS. — We   shall   quote,    without 
comment,  the  first  subjects  of  instruction  which,  under  the 
title    of    Lemons   preliminaires,   Condillac   proposes    to    his 
pupil:     1.  the  nature  of  ideas;   2.   the  operations  of    the 
soul;  3.  the  habits;  4.  the  difference  between  the  soul  and 
the  body  ;  5.  the  knowledge  of  God. 

How  are  we  to  conceive  that  Condillac  had  the  pretension 
to  place  these  high  philosophical  speculations  within  the 
reach  of  a  child  of  seven  years  who  has  not  yet  studied  the 
grammar  of  his  native  language  !  How  much  better  some 
fables  or  historical  narratives  would  answer  his  purpose  ! 

But  Condillac  does  not  stop  there.  When  his  pupil  has  a 
systematic  knowledge  of  the  operations  of  the  soul,  when 
he  has  comprehended  the  genesis  of  ideas  ;  in  a  word,  when, 
towards  the  age  of  eight  or  ten,  he  is  as  proficient  in  philos- 
ophy as  his  master,  and  almost  as  capable  of  writing  the 
Treatise  on  Sensations,  what  do  you  think  he  is  invited  to 
study?  Something  which  very  much  resembles  the  philoso- 
phy of  history  :  — 

"  After  having  made  him  reflect  on  his  own  infanc}*,  I 
thought  that  the  infancy  of  the  world  would  be  the  most 
interesting  subject  for  him,  and  the  easiest  to  study." 

343.  THE  ART  OF  THINKING.  —  It  is  only  when  he  judges 
that  the  mind  of  his  pupil  is  sufficiently  prepared  by  psycho- 
logical analysis    and  by  general  reflections  on  the  progress 
of  humanity,  that  Condillac  decides  to  have   him  enter  upon 
the  ordinary  course  of  stud}-.     Here  the  spirit  of  system  dis- 


316  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

appears,  and  gives  place  to  more  judicious  and  more  practi- 
cal ideas.  Thus  Condillac  thinks  that  "the  stud}-  of  gram- 
mar would  be  more  wearisome  than  useful  if  it  come  too 
early."  Would  that  he  had  applied  this  principle  to  psychol- 
ogy !  Before  studying  grammar,  then,  Condillac's  pupil  reads 
the  poets,  —  the  French  poets,  of  course,  —  and  preferably 
the  dramatic  authors,  Racine  especially,  whom  he  reads  for 
the  twelfth  time.  The  real  knowledge  of  the  language  pre- 
cedes the  abstract  studj-  of  tfie.  rules.  Condillac  himself 
composed  a  grammar  entitled  the*  '-"Art  of  Speaking.  In  this 
he  imitates  the  authors  of  Portf  "Royal,  "who,"  he  says, 

I"  were  the  first  to  write  elementary  books  on  an  intelligent 
plan."  After  the  Art  of  .Speaking  he  calls  the  attention  of 
his  pupil  to  three  other  treatises  in  succession,  —  the  Art  of 
Writing,  or  rhetoric,  the  Art  of  Reasoning,  or  logic,  and  the 
:  Art  of  Thinking.  We  shall  not  attempt  an  analysis  of  these 
works,  which  have  gone  out  of  d.ate,  notwithstanding  the 
value  of  certain  portions  of  them.  The  general  characteris- 
tic of  these  treatises  on  intellectual  education  is  that  the 
author  is  pre-occupied  with  the  relations  of  ideas  more  than 
with  the  exterior  elegancies  of  style,  with  the  development  of 
thought  more  than  with  the  beauties  of  language  :  — 

'•Especially  must  the  intelligence  be  nourished,  even  as 
the  bod}*  is  nourished.  We  must  present  to  it  knowledge, 
which  is  the  wholesome  aliment  of  spirit,  opinions  and  errors 

;  being  aliment  that  is  poisonous.  It  is  also  necessary  that 
the  intelligence  be  active,  for  the  thought  remains  imbecile 
as  long  as,  passive  rather  than  active,  it  moves  at  random." 

344.  OTHER  PARTS  OF  THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY.  —  It 
seems  that  Condillac  is  in  pursuit  of  but  one  single  purpose, 
—  to  make  of  his  pupil  a  thinking  being.  The  study  of 
Latin  is  postponed  till  the  time  when  the  intelligence,  being 
completely  formed,  will  find  in  the  study  of  that  language 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTUUY.      317 

only  the  difficulty  of  learning  words.  Condillac  has  but 
little  taste  for  the  study  of  the  ancient  languages.  He  rele- 
gates the  study  of  Latin,  to  the  second  place,  and  omits 
Greek  entirely.  But  he  accords  a  great  importance  to  his- 
torical studies. 

"(Ifter  having  learned  to  think,  the  Prince  made  the  study  \ 
of  history  his  principal  object  for  six  years.^    C^--KT et*M*4/ ' 

Twelve  volumes  of  the  Course  of  Study  have  transmitted    j 
to  us  Condillac's  lessons  in  history.     In  this  he  does  not  take 
delight,  as  Rollin  does,  in  long  narrations  ;  but  he  analyzes, 
multiplies  his  reflections,  and  abridges   facts ;    he    philoso- 
phizes more  than  he  recites  the  facts  of  history. 

345.  PERSONAL  REFLECTION.  —  AVhat  we  have  said  of  Con- 
dillac's Course  of  Study  suffices  to  justify  the  judgment 
expressed  of  his  pedagogy  by  one  of  his  disciples,  Ge'rando, 
when  he  wrote:  "He  who  had  so  thoroughly  studied  the 
manner  in  which  ideas  are  formed  in  the  human  mind,  had 
but  little  skill  in  calling  them  into  being  in  the  intelligence 
of  his  pupil." 

But  we  would  judge  our  author  unjustly  if,  after  the  criti- 
cisms we  have  made  of  him,-  we  were  not  to  accord  him  the 
praise  he  deserves,  especially  for  having  comprehended,  as  he 
has  done,  the  value  of  personal  reflection,  and  the  superiority 
of  judgment  over  memory.  A  few  quotations  will  rehabilitate 
the  pedagogy  of  Coudillac  in  the  minds  of  our  readers. 

Above  all  else  there  must  be  an  exercise  in  personal 
reflection  :  — 

"  I  grant  that  the  education  which  cultivates  only  the 
memory  may  make  prodigies,  and  that  it  has  done  so  ;  but 
these  prodigies  last  only  during  the  time  of  infancy.  .  .  . 
He  who  knows  only  by  heart,  knows  nothing.  .  .  .  He  who 
has  not  learned  to  reflect  has  not  been  instructed,  or,  what  is 
still  worse,  has  been  poorly  instructed." 


318  THE   HISTOJJY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

"  True  knowledge  is  in  the  reflection,  which  has  acquired 
it,  much  more  than  in  the  memory,  which  holds  it  in  keep- 
ing ;  and  the  things  which  we  are  capable  of  recovering  ;ux- 
better  known  than  those  of  which  we  have  a  recollection. 
It  does  not  suffice,  then,  to  give  a  child  knowledge.  It  is 
necessary  that  he  instruct  himself  by  seeking  knowledge  on 
his  own  account,  and  the  essential  point  is  to  guide  him 
properly.  If  he  is-  led  in  an  orderly  way,  he  will  acquire 
exact  ideas,  and  will  seize  their  succession  and  relation. 
Then,  able  to  call  them  up  for  review,  he  will  be  able  to 
compare  them  with  others  that  are  more  remote,  and  to 
make  a  final  choice  of  those  which  he  wishes  to  study. 
Reflection  can  always  recover  the  things  it  has  known, 
because  it  knows  how  it  originally  found  them ;  but  the 
memory  does  not  so  recover  the  things  it  has  learned, 
because  it  does  not  know  how  it  learns." 

This  is  why  Condillac  places  far  above  the  education  we 
receive,  the  education  that  we  give  ourselves  :  — 

"Henceforth,  Sir,  it  remains  for  you  alone  to  instruct 
yourself.  Perhaps  you  imagine  you  have  finished  ;  but  it  is  I 
who  have  finished.  You  are  to  begin  anew  !  " 

346.  EXCESSIVE  DEVOTION  CRITICISED. — "What  beautiful 
lessons  Condillac  also  addresses  to  his  pupil  to  induce  him  to 
enfranchise  himself  from  ecclesiastical  tutelage !  Written 
by  an  abbot,  the  eloquent  page  we  are  about  to  read  proves 
how  the  lay  spirit  tended  to  pronounce  itself  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

"You  cannot  be  too  pious,  Sir;  but  if  your  piety  is  not 
enlightened,  you  will  so  far  forget  your  duties  as  to  be 
engrossed  in  the  little  things  of  devotion.  Because  prayer  is 
necessary,  you  will  think  you  ought  always  to  be  praying, 
not  considering  that  true  devotion  consists  first  of  all  in 
fulfilling  the  duties  of  your  station  in  life  :  it  will  not  be  your 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     319 

fault  that  you  do  not  live  in  your  heart  as  in  a  cloister. 
Hypocrites  will  swarm  around  you,  the  monks  will  issue 
from  their  cells.  The  priests  will  abandon  the  service  of  the 
altar  in  order  to  be  edified  with  the  sight  of  your  holy 
works.  Blind  prince  !  you  will  not  perceive  how  their  con- 
duct is  in  contradiction  with  their  language.  You  will  not 
even  observe  that  the  men  who  praise  you  for  always  being 
at  the  foot  of  the  altar,  themselves  forget  that  it  is  their  own 
duty  to  be  there.  You  will  unconsciously  take  their  place 
and  leave  to  them  your  own.  You  will  be  continually  at 
prayer,  and  you  will  believe  that  }-ou  assure  your  salvation. 
They  will  cease  to  pray,  and  you  will  believe  that  the\- 
assure  their  salvation.  Strange  contradiction,  which  turns 
aside  ministers  from  the  Church  to  give  bad  ministers  to  the 
State."  i 

347.  DIDEROT  (1713-1784).  —  To  him  who  knows  noth- 
ing of  Diderot  save  his  works  of  imagination,  often  so  licen- 
tious, it  will  doubtless  be  a  surprise  to  see  the  name  of  this 
fantastic   writer   inscribed    in   the   catalogue   of   educators. 
But   this   astonishment  will   disappear  if  we  will  take   the 
trouble  to  recollect  with  what  versatility  this  mighty  spirit 
could  vary  the   subject  of  his  reflections,  and  pass  from  the 
gay  to  the   solemn,  and  especially  with  what  ardor,  in  con- 
junction with  D'Alembert,  he  was  the  principal  founder  of 
the  Encyclopedic,  and  the  indefatigable  contributor  to  it. 

348.  His  PEDAGOGICAL  WORKS. — But  there  is  no  room 
for  doubt.     Diderot  has  written  at  least  two  treatises  that 
belong  to  the  history  of  education:  first,  about  1773,  The 
Systematic  Refutation  of  the  Booh  of  Helvetius  on  Man,  an 
incisive  and  eloquent  criticism  of  the  paradoxes  and  errors 
of  Helvetius  ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  about  1776,  a  com- 

1  Cours  d'etudcs,  Tome  X.  Introduction. 


320  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

plete  scheme  of  education,  composed  at  the  request  of  Cath- 
erine II.,  under  the  title,  Plan  of  a  University.1 

349.  His  MERITS  AS  AN  EDUCATOH.  —  Doubtless  Diderot 
did  not  have  sufficient  gravity  of  character   or    sufficiently 
definite  ideas  to  be  a  perfect  educator ;  but,  by  way  of  com- 
pensation, the  natural  and   acquired   qualities   of    his   mind 
made  him  worthy  of  the  confidence  placed  in  him  by  Cathe- 
rine II.  in  entrusting  him  with  the  organization,  at  least  in 
theory,  of  the  instruction  of  the  Russian  people.     First  of 
all,  he  had  the  merit  of   being  a  universal  thinker,  "  suffi- 
ciently versed  in  all  the  sciences  to  know  their  value,  and 
not  sufficiently  profound  in  any  one  to  give  it  a  preference 

\  inspired  by  predilection."  Engaged  in  the  scientific  move- 
ment, of  which  the  Encyclopedic  was  the  centre,  he  at  the 
same  time  cherished  an  enthusiastic  passion  for  letters.  He 
worshipped  Shakespeare  and  modern  poetry,  but  he  was  not 
less  enamored  of  classical  antiquity,  and  for  several  years, 
he  says,  "he  thought  it  as  much  a  religious  duty  to  read  a 
song  of  Homer  as  a  good  priest  would  to  recite  his  breviary." 

350.  NECESSITY  OF   INSTRUCTION.  —  Diderot,   and  this  is 
to  his  praise,  is  distinguished  from  the  most  of  his  contem- 
poraries, and  especially  from  Rousseau,  by  his  ardent  faith 
in  the  moral  efficacy  of  instruction  :  — 

"Far  from  corrupting,"  he  exclaims,  "instruction  sweet- 
ens character,  throws  light  on  duty,  makes  vice  less  gross, 
and  either  chokes  it  or  conceals  it.  ...  I  dare  assert  that 
purity  of  morals  has  followed  the  progress  of  dress,  from  the 
skin  of  animals  to  fabrics  of  silk." 

Hence  he  decides  on  the  necessity  of  instruction  for  all :  — 
"  From  the  prime  minister  to  the  lowest  peasant,  it  is  good 
for  every  one  to  know  how  to  read,  write,  and  count." 

1  See  (Euvres  completes  of  Diderot.  Edited  by  Tourneux,  1876-77. 
Tomes  II.  and  III. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY.     321 

And  he  proposes  to  all  people  the  example  of  Germany, 
with  her  strongly  organized  system  of  primary  instruction. 
He  demands  schools  open  to  all  children,  "  schools  of  read-   ' 
ing,   writing,  arithmetic,   and   religion,"    in   which    will   be 
studied  both  a  moral  and  a  political  catechism.      Attend- 
ance on  these  schools  shall  be  obligatory,  and  to  make  com- 
pulsion possible,  Diderot  demands  gratuity.     He  goes  even    1 
farther,  and  would  have  the  child  fed  at  school,  and  with  his    • 
books  would  have  him  find  bread. 

351.  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  PUBLIC  INSTRUCTION.  —  Like  all 
who  sincerel}'  desire  a  strong  organization  of  instruction, 
Diderot  assigns  the  direction  of  it  to  the  State.     His  ideal  of 
a  Russian  university  bears  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  French 
University  of  1808.     He  would  have  at  its  head  a  politician, 
a  statesman,  to  whom  should  be  submitted  all  the  affairs  of 
public  instruction.     He  even  went  so  far  as  to  entrust  to 
this  general  master  of  the  university  the  duty  of  presiding 
over  the  examinations,  of  appointing  the  presidents  of  col- 
leges, of  excluding  bad  pupils,  and  of  deposing  professors 
and  tutors. 

352.  CRITICISM  OF  FRENCH  COLLEGES.  —  Secondary  instruc- 
tion, what  was  then  called  the  Faculty  of  Arts,  is  the  princi- 
pal object  of  Diderot's  reflections.    He  criticises  the  traditional 
system  with  extreme  severity,  and  his  charge,  thought  some- 
times unjust,  deserves  to  be  quoted  :  — 

' '  It  is  in  the  Faculty  of  Arts  that  there  are  still  taught 
to-day,  under  the  name  of  belles-lettres,  two  dead  languages 
which  are  of  use  only  to  a  small  number  of  citizens  ;  it  is 
there  that  they  are  studied  for  six  or  seven  years  without 
being  learned  ;  under  the  name  of  rhetoric,  the  art  of  speak- 
ing is  taught  before  the  art  of  thinking,  and  that  of  speaking 
elegantly  before  having  ideas  ;  under  the  name  of  logic,  tlu> 
head  is  filled  with  the  subtilties  of  Aristotle,  and  of  his  very 


X 

322  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

sublime  and  very  useless  theory  of  the  syllogism,  and  there 
is  spread  over  a  hundred  obscure  pages  what  might  have  been 
clearly  stated  in  four ;  under  the  name  of  ethics,  I  do  not 
know  what  is  said,  but  I  know  that  there  is  not  a  word  said 
either  of  the  qualities  of  mind  or  heart ;  under  the  name  of 
metaphysics,  there  are  discussed  theses  as  trifling  as  they  are 
knotty,  the  first  elements  of  scepticism  and  bigotry,  and  the 
germ  of  the  unfortunate  gift  of  replying  to  everything  ;  under 
the  name  of  physics,  there  is  endless  dispute  about  the  ele- 
ments of  matter  and  the  system  of  the  world  ;  but  not  a  word 
on  natural  history,  not  a  word  on  real  chemistry,  very  little 
ou  the  movement  and  fall  of  bodies  ;  very  few  experiments, 
less  still  of  anatomy,  and  nothing  of  geography."  * 

353.  PROPOSED  REFORMS.  —  After  such  a  spirited  criticism, 
it  was  Diderot's  duty  to  propose  earnest  and  radical  reforms  ; 
but  all  of  those  which  he  suggests  are  not  equally  com- 
mendable. 

Let  us  first  note  the  idea  revived  in  our  day  by  Auguste 
Comte  and  the  school  of  positivists,  of  a  connection  and  a 
subordination  of  the  sciences,  classified  in  a  certain  order, 
according  as  they  presuppose  the  science  which  has  preceded, 
or  as  they  facilitate  the  study  of  the  science  which  follows, 
and  also  according  to  the  measure  of  their  utility.2  It  is 
according  to  this  last  principle  in  particular,  that  Diderot 
distributes  the  work  of  the  school,  after  having  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  order  of  the  sciences,  as  determined 
by  the  needs  of  the  school,  is  not  their  logical  order :  — 

"  The  natural  connection  of  one  science  with  the  others 
designates  for  it  a  place,  and  the  principle  of  utility,  more 
or  less  general,  determines  for  it  another  place." 

1  (Euvres,  Tome  III.  p.  459. 

2  For  Comte's  classification  of  the  sciences,  see  Spencer's  Illustrations 
of  Universal  Progress,  Chap.  III.     (P.) 


PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     323 

But  Diderot  forgets  that  we  must  take  into  account,  not 
alone  the  principle  of  utility  in  the  distribution  of  studies, 
but  that  the  essential  thing  of  all  others  is  to  adapt  the  order    / 
of  studies  to  the  progress  of  the  child  in  age  and  aptitudes. 

354.  PREFERENCES  FOR  THE  SCIENCES.  —  Although  equally 
enamored  of  letters  and  the  sciences,  Diderot  did  not  know 
how  to  hold  a  just  balance  between  a  literary  and  a  scientific 
education.  Anticipating  Condorcet  and  Auguste  Comte,  he 
displaces  the  centre  of  instruction,  and  gives  a  preponderance 
to  the  sciences.  Of  the  eight  classes  comprised  in  his 
Faculty  of  Arts,  the  first  five  are  devoted  to  the  mathematics, 
to  mechanics,  to  astronomy,  to  physics,  and  to  chemistry. 
Grammar  and  the  ancient  languages  are  relegated  to  the  last 
three  years,  which  nearly  correspond  to  what  are  called  in 
our  colleges  the  "  second  "  and  "  rhetoric."  1 

The  charge  that  must  be  brought  against  Diderot  in  this 
place,  is  not  merely  that  he  puts  an  unreasonable  restriction 
on  literary  studies,  but  also  that  he  makes  a  bad  distribution 
of  scientific  studies  in  placing  the  mathematics  before  physics. 
It  is  useless  for  him  to  assert  that  "it  is  easier  to  learn  \ 
geometry  than  to  learn  to  read."     He  does  not  convince  us  I 
of  this.     It  is  a  grave  error  to  begin  by  keeping  the  child's   ' 
attention  on  numerical  abstractions,  by  leaving  his  senses 
unemployed,   by  postponing  so  long  the  study  of  natural 
history  and  experimental  physics,  those  sciences  expressly 
adapted  to  children,  because,  as  Diderot  himself  expresses 
it,  "•  they  involve  a  continuous  exercise  of  sight,  smell,  taste, 
and  memory." 

To  excuse  Diderot's  error,  it  does  not  suffice  to  state  that 
his  pupil  does  not  enter  the  Faculty  of  Arts  till  his  twelfth 
year.  Till  that  period,  he  will  learn  only  reading,  writing,  / 

1  See  note,  p.  131. 


324  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

and  orthography.  There  is  ground  for  thinking  that  these 
first  years  will  be  rather  poorly  employed ;  but  besides  this, 
it  is  evident  that  even  at  the  age  of  twelve  the  mind  is  not 
sufficiently  mature  to  be  plunged  into  the  cold  deductions  of 
mathematics. 

355.  INCOMPLETE  VIEWS  AS  TO  THE  SCOPE  OF  LITERARY 
STUDIES. — Diderot's  attitude  with  respect  to  classical  studies 
is  a  matter  of  surprise.  On  the  one  hand,  he  postpones  their 
study  till  the  pupil's  nineteenth  and  twentieth  year.  On  the 
other,  with  what  enthusiasm  this  eloquent  scholar  speaks  of 
the  ancients,  particularly  of  Homer ! 

"  Homer  is  the  master  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for  what- 
ever merit  I  have,  if  indeed  I  have  any  at  all.  It  is  difficult 
to  attain  to  excellence  in  taste  without  a  knowledge  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  languages.  I  early  drew  my  intellectual 
nourishment  from  Homer,  Virgil,  Horace,  Terence,  Anacreon, 
Plato,  and  Euripides  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  Moses  and 
the  Prophets  on  the  other." 

How  are  we  to  explain  this  contradiction  of  an  incon- 
sistent and  ungrateful  humanist  who  extols  the  humanities 
to  the  skies,  and  at  the  same  time  puts  such  restrictions  on 
the  teaching  of  them  as  almost  to  annihilate  them?  The 
reason  for  this  is,  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  belles-lettres  are 
useful  only  for  the  training  of  orators  and  poets,  but  are  not 
serviceable  in  the  general  development  of  the  mind.  Conse- 
quently, being  fancy  studies,  so  to  speak,  they  are  fit  only 
for  a  small  minority  of  pupils,  and  have  no  right  to  the  first 
place  in  a  common  education,  destined  for  men  in  general. 
Diderot  is  not  able  to  discern  what,  in  pedagogy,  is  their 
true  title  to  nobility,  —  that  they  are  an  admirable  instru- 
ment of  intellectual  gymnastics,  and  the  surest  and  also  the 
most  convenient  means  of  acquiring  those  qualities  of  just- 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     325 

ness,  of  precision,  and  of  clearness,  which  are  needed  by  all 
conditions  of  men,  and  are  applicable  to  all  the  special  em- 
ployments of  life.1 

35G.  OPINION  OF  MARMONTEL.  — Diderot  seems  to  reduce 
the  ottice  of  letters  to  a  study  of  words,  and  to  an  exercise  of 
memory.  He  might  have  learned  a  lesson  from  one  of  his 
contemporaries,  Marmontel,  whose  intellect,  though  less  bril- 
liant, was  sometimes  more  just,  an  advantage  which  the 
intelligence  gains  from  early  discipline  in  the  study  of  the 
languages : — 

"The  choice  and  use  of  words,  in  translating  from  one 
language  to  another,  and  even  then  some  degree  of  elegance 
in  the  construction  of  sentences,  began  to  interest  me  ;  and 
this  work,  which  did  not  proceed  without  the  analysis  of  ideas, 
fortified  my  memory.  I  perceived  that  it  was  the  idea  attached 
to  the  word  which  made  it  take  root,  and  reflection  soon  made 
me  feel  that  the  study  of  the  languages  was  also  the  study  of 
the  art  of  distinguishing  shades  of  thought,  of  decomposing  it, 
of  forming  its  texture,  and  of  catching  with  precision  its 
spirit  and  its  relations  ;  and  that  along  with  words,  an  equal  / 
number  of  new  ideas  were  introduced  and  developed  in  the . 

1  This  thought  will  bear  extension  as  in  the  following  quotation  :  "The 
reasoning  that  I  oppose  starts  from  the  low  and  false  assumption  that  in- 
struction serves  only  for  the  practical  use  that  is  made  of  it;  for  example, 
that  he  who,  by  his  social  position,  does  not  make  use  of  his  intellectual 
culture,  has  no  need  of  that  culture.  Literature,  from  this  point  of  view, 
is  useful  only  to  the  man  of  letters,  science  only  to  the  scientist,  good  man- 
ners and  fine  bearing  cnly  to  men  of  the  world.  The  poor  man  should  be 
ignorant,  for  education  and  knowledge  are  useless  to  him.  Blasphemy, 
Gentlemen !  The  culture  of  the  mind  and  the  culture  of  the  soul  are  duties 
for  every  man.  They  are  not  simple  ornaments:  they  are  things  as  sacred 
as  religion"  (Renan,  Fcimille  etEtat,  p.  3).  This  is  a  sufficient  answer 
to  Mr.  Spencer's  assumption  (Education,  p.  84),  that  the  studies  that  are 
best  for  guidance  are  at  the  same  time  the  best  for  discipline.  See  also 
Dugald  Stewart  (Elements,  p.  12).  (P.) 


326  THE    HISTORY   OP   PEDAGOGY. 

heads  of  the  young,1  and  that  in  this  way  the  early  classes 
were  a  course  in  elementary  philosophy,  much  more  rich, 
more  extended,  and  of  greater  real  utility  than  we  think, 
when  we  complain  that  in  our  colleges  nothing  is  learned  but 
Latin."2 

357.  OTHER  NOVELTIES  IN  DIDEROT'S  PLAN.  —  Without 
entering  into  the  details  of  the  very  elaborate  organization 
of  Diderot's  Russian  University,  we  shall  call  attention  to 
some  other  novelties  of  his  system :  — 

1.  The  division  of  the  classes  into  several  series  of  paral- 
lel courses  :  first,  the  series  of  scientific  and  literary  courses  ; 
then,  the  series  of  lectures  devoted  to  religion,  to  ethics,  and 
to  history ;  and  finally,  courses  in  drawing,  music,  etc. 

2.  The  whimsical  idea  of  teaching  history  in  an  inverted 
order,  so  to  speak,  in  beginning  with  the  most  recent  events, 
and  little  by  little  going  back  to  antiquity. 

3.  His  extreme  estimate  of  the  art  of  reading:  "  Let  a 
teacher  of  reading  be  associated  with  a  professor  of  drawing  ; 

1  This  thought  throws  light  on  a  dictum  of  current  pedagogy,  "  First, 
the  idea,  then  the  term."    It  shows  that  very  often,  in  actual  experience, 
the  sequence  is  from  term  to  idea.    The  relation  between  term  and  idea  is 
the  same  in  kind  as  that  between  sentence  and  thought.    Must  we  then  say, 
"  First  the  thought,  then  the  sentence"?    Or,  "First  the  thought,  then  the 
chapter  or  the  book ' '  ? 

The  disciplinary  value  of  translation  is  also  well  stated.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  schools  furnish  a  better  "intellectual  gymnastic.'1 
Three  high  intellectual  attainments  are  involved  in  a  real  translation :  1. 
The  separation  of  the  thought  from  the  original  form  of  words;  2.  The 
seizing  or  comprehension  of  the  thought  as  a  mental  possession ;  and  3.  The 
embodying  of  the  thought  in  a  new  form.  A  strictly  analogous  process,  of 
almost  equal  value  in  its  place,  is  that  variety  of  reading  in  which  the 
pupil  is  required  to  express  the  thought  of  the  paragraph  in  his  oicn  lan- 
guage. This  exercise  involves  the  three  processes  above  stated,  and  may 
be  called  "  the  translation  of  thought  from  one  form  into  another,  in  the 
same  language."  (P.) 

2  Marmoutel,  Memoires  d'un  pere  pour  servir  a  I'  instruction  de  ses  en~ 
fants,  Tome  I.  p.  19. 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.      327 

there  are  so  few  men,  even  the  most  enlightened,  who  know 
how  to  read  well,  a  gift  always  so  agreeable,  and  ofteu  so 
necessaiy." 

4.  A  special  regard  for  the  study  of  art  and  for  aesthetic 
education,  which  could  not  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the 
great  art  critic  who  wrote  the  Salons. 

5.  A  reform  in  the  system  of  ushers.1     Diderot  would 
have  for  supervising  assistants  in  colleges,  educated  men, 
capable  on  occasion  of  supplying  the  places  of  the  profes- 
sors themselves.     To  attach  them  to  their  duties,  he  requires 
that  some  dignity  be  given  to  their  modest  and  useful  func- 
tions, and  that  the  usher  be  a  sort  of  supernumerary, , or 
"  professor  in  reversion,"  who  aspires  to  the  chair  of  the  pro- 
fessor, whose  place  he  supplies  from  time  to  time,  and  which 
he  may  finally  attain. 

358.  HELVETIUS  (1715-1771).  —  In  undertaking  the  study 
of  the  thoughts  of  Helvetius  on  education,  and  the  rapid 
analysis  of  his  Treatise  on  Man,  we  shall  not  take  leave  of 
Diderot,  for  the  work  of  Helvetius  has  had  the  good  or  the 
bad  fortune  of  being  commented  on  and  criticised  by  his 
illustrious  contemporar}-.     Thanks  to  the  Systematic  Refuta- 
tion of  the  Book  of  Helvetius  on  Man,  which  forms  a  charming 
accompaniment  of  pungent  or  vigorous  reflections  to  a  dull 
and  languid  book,  the  reading  of  the  monotonous  treatise  of 
Helvetius  becomes  easy  and  almost  agreeable. 

359.  THE  TREATISE  ON  MAN. — Under  this  title,  a  little 
long,  De  riiomme,  de  ses  facultes  intellectuelles  et  de  son  Edu- 
cation, Helvetius  has  composed  a  large  work  which  he  had  in 
contemplation  for  fifteen  years,  and  which  did  not  appear 
till  after  his  death,  in  1772.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  education 
does  not  directly  occupy  the  author's  attention  except  in  the 

1  Mditre  d'e'tudc  :  "  He  who  in  a  lycee,  college,  or  boarding-school,  has 
oversight  of  pupils  during  study  hours  and  recreations."  —  LJTTRE. 


328  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

first  and  the  last  chapters  (sections  I.  and  X.) .  With  this 
exception,  the  whole  book  is  devoted  to  long  developments 
of  the  favorite  maxims  of  his  philosophy :  as  the  intel- 
lectual equality  of  all  men,  and  the  reduction  of  all  the  pas- 
sions to  the  pursuit  of  pleasure ;  or  to  platitudes,  such  as 
the  influence  of  laws  on  the  happiness  of  people,  and  the  evils 
which  result  from  ignorance. 

360.  POTENCY  OF  EDUCATION.  —  When  he  does  not  fall 
into  platitudes,  Helvetius  goes  off  into  paradoxes  that  are 
presumptuous  and  systematic.  His  habitual  characteristic 
is  pedantry  in  what  is  false.  According  to  him,  for  example, 
education  is  all-powerful ;  it  is  the  sole  cause  of  the  differ- 
ence between  minds.  The  mind  of  the  child  is  but  an  empty 
capacity,  something  indeterminate,  without  predisposition. 
/The  impressions  .of  the  senses  .are  the  only  elements  of  the 
/  intelligence  ;  so  that  the  acquisitions  of  the  five  senses  are 
the  only  thing  that  is  of  moment ;  "  the  senses  are  all  that 
there  is  of  man."  It  is  not  possible  to  push  sensationalism 
further  than  this. 

The  impressions  of  the  senses  are,  then,  the  basis  of 
human  nature,  and  as  these  impressions  vary  with  circum- 
stances, Helvetius  arrives  at  this  conclusion,  that  chance  is 
the  great  master  in  the  formation  of  mind  and  character. 
Consequently,  he  undertakes  to  produce  at  will  men  of 
genius,  or,  at  least,  men  of  talent.  For  this  purpose,  it 
suffices  to  ascertain,  by  repeated  observations,  the  means 
which  chance  employs  for  making  great  men.  These  means 
once  discovered,  it  remains  only  to  set  them  at  work  arti- 
ficially and  to  combine  them,  in  order  to  produce  the  same 
effects. 

"  Genius  is  a  product  of  chance.  Rousseau,  like  a  count- 
less number  of  illustrious  men,  may  be  regarded  as  one  of 
the  masterpieces  of  chance." 


PHILOSOPHERS   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY.     329 

361.  HELVETIUS  REFUTED  BY  DIDEROT.  —  It  is  easy  to 
reply  to  extravagant  statements  of  this  sort.  Had  Helve- 
tius consulted  teachers  and  parents,  had  he  observed  himself, 
had  he  simply  reflected  on  his  two  daughters,  so  unequally 
endowed  though  identically  educated,  he  would  doubtless 
have  felt  constrained  to  acknowledge  the  limitations  of 
education  ;  he  would  have  comprehended  that  it  cannot  give 
imagination  to  minds  of  sluggish  temperament,  nor  enthusi- 
asm and  sensibility  to  inert  souls,  and  that  the  most  marvel-  • 
lously  helpful  circumstances  will  not  make  of  a  Helvetius  a  | 
Montesquieu  or  a  Voltaire. 

But  if  it  is  easy  to  refute  Helvetius,  it  is  impossible  to 
criticise  him  with  more  brilliancy  and  eloquence  than  Diderot 
has  done.  With  what  perfection  of  reason  he  restores  to 
nature,  to  innate  and  irresistible  inclinations,  the  influence 
which  Helvetius  denies  to  them  in  the  formation  of  char- 
acter ! 

"The  accidents  of  Helvetius,"  he  says,  "are  like  the 
spark  which  sets  on  fire  a  cask  of  wine,  and  which  is  extin- 
guished in  a  bucket  of  water." 

"  For  thousands  of  centuries  the  dew  of  heaven  has  fallen 
on  the  rocks  without  making  them  fertile.     The  sown  fields 
await  it  in  order  to  become  productive,  but  it  is  not  the  dew 
that  scatters  the  seed.     Accidents  themselves  no  more  pro-    , 
duee    anything,    than    the   pick   of    the   laborer   who  delves  ' 
in    the   mines   of    Golconda    produces    the   diamond    that  it 
brings  to  the  surface." 

Doubtless  education  has  a  more  radical  effect  than  that 
which  is  attributed  to  it  by  La  Bruyere  when  he  said  that 
"  it  touches  only  the  surface  of  the  soul."  But  if  it  can  do 
much,  it  cannot  do  all.  It  perfects  if  it  is  good  ;  it  deadens 
and  it  perverts  if  it  is  bad ;  but  it  can  never  be  a  substitute 
for  lacking  aptitude,  and  can  never  replace  nature. 


330  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

362.  SECULARIZED  INSTRUCTION.  —  In  other  parts  of  his 
system  Helvetius  is  in  accord  with  Diderot.  Like  him.  he 
believes  the  necessary  condition  of  progress  in  education  is 
that  it  be  made  secular  and  entrusted  to  the  civil  power. 
The  vices  of  education  come  from  the  opposition  of  the  two 
powers,  spiritual  and  temporal,  that  assume  to  direct  it. 
Between  the  Church  and  the  State  there  is  an  opposition  of 
interests  and  views.  The  State  would  have  the  nation 
become  brave,  industrious,  and  enlightened.  The  Church 
demands  a  blind  submission  and  unlimited  credulity.  Hence 
there  is  contradiction  in  pedagogical  precepts,  diversity  in 
the  means  that  are  employed,  and,  consequently,  an  educa- 
tion that  is  hesitating,  that  is  pulled  in  opposite  directions, 
that  does  not  know  definitely  where  it  is  going,  that  misses 
its  wa\-,  that  gropes  and  wastes  time. 

But  the  conclusion  of  Helvetius  is  not  as  we  might  expect, 
—  the  separation  of  Church  and  State  in  the  matter  of 
instruction  and  education,  such  as  recent  laws  have  estab- 
lished in  France.  No ;  Helvetius  would  have  the  State 
absorb  the  Church,  and  have  religious  power  and  civil 
power  lodged  in  the  same  hands  and  both  belong  to  those 
who  control  the  government,  —  a  vexatious  confusion  that 
would  end  in  the  oppression  of  consciences. 

Helvetius,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  him,  does  not 
deserve  to  claim  our  attention  for  any  length  of  time,  and  we 
cannot  seriously  consider  as  an  authority  in  pedagogy  a  writer 
who,  in  intellectual  as  in  moral  education,  reduces  everything 
to  a  single  principle,  the  development  and  the  satisfaction  of 
physical  sensibility.1 

1  It  is  a  matter  of  surprise  that  in  a  German  Pedagogical  Library  the  very 
first  French  work  published  is  the  Traitt  de  I'Homme  of  Helvetius.  This 
is  giving  the  place  of  honor  to  what  is  perhaps  of  the  most  ordinary  value 
in  French  pedagogical  literature. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     331 

363.  THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.  —  The  vast  collection  which, 
under  the  name  Encyclopedic,  sums  up  the  science  and  the 
philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  touches  educational 
questions  only  in  passing.  Properly  speaking,  the  Encyclo- 
pedic contains  no  system  of  pedagogy.  The  principal  frag- 
ment is  the  article  Education,  written  by  the  grammarian 
and  Latinist  Dumarsais. 

But  this  piece  of  work  is  little  worthy  of  its  author,  and 
little  worthy  in  particular  of  the  Encyclopedic.  It  contains 
scarcely  anything  but  vague  and  trite  generalities,  and 
belongs  to  the  category  of  those  articles  for  padding  which 
caused  Voltaire  to  say  :  "You  accept  articles  worthy  of  the 
Journal  of  Ti-evoux."  We  shall  notice,  however,  in  this 
article,  the  importance  accorded  to  the  study  of  physics,  and 
to  the  practice  of  the  arts,  even  the  most  common,  and  the 
marked  purpose  to  "  subordinate  "  knowledges  and  studies, 
or  to  distribute  them  in  a  logical,  or  rather  psychological, 
order ;  for  example,  to  cause  the  concrete  always  to  precede 
the  abstract.  But,  after  having  lost  himself  in  considera- 
tions of  but  little  interest  on  the  development  of  ideas  and 
sentiments  in  the  human  soul,  the  author,  who  is  decidedly 
far  below  his  task,  concludes  by  recommending  to  young 
people  "  the  reading  of  newspapers." 

The  other  pedagogical  articles  of  the  Encyclopedic  are 
equally  deficient  in  striking  novelties.  If  the  great  work  of 
D'Aleinbert  and  Diderot  has  contributed  something  to  the 
progress  of  education,  it  is  less  through  the  insufficient 
efforts  which  it  has  directly  attempted  in  this  direction,  than 
through  the  general  influence  which  it  has  exercised  on  the 
French  mind  in  extolling  the  sciences  in  their  theoretical 
study  as  well  as  in  their  practical  applications,  in  diffusing 
technical  knowledge,  in  glorifying  the  industrial  arts,  and  in 
thus  preparing  for  the  coming  of  a  scientific  and  positive 


832  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

education  in  place  of  an  education  exclusively  literary  and  of 
pure  form. 

364.  KANT   (1724-1804).  —  We   know  the    considerable 
influence  which,  tor  a  century,  Kant  has  exercised  on   the 
development  of  philosophy.     Since  Descartes,  no  thinker  had 
to  the  same  degree  excited  an  interest  in  the  great  problems 
of  philosophy,  nor  more  vigorously  obliged  the  human  reason 
to  render  an  account  of  itself.     It  is  then  a  piece  of  good 
fortune  for  the  science  of  education  that  a  philosopher  of  this 
order  has  taken  up  the  discussion  of  pedagogical  questions, 
and  has  thrown  upon  theifa  the  light  of  his  penetrating  criti- 
cism.    The  admiration  which  he  felt  for  Rousseau,  his  atten- 
tive and  impassioned  reading  of  the  Emile,  his  own  reflec- 
tions on  the  monastic  education  which  he  had  received  at  the 
Collegium  Fredericianum,  a  sort  of  small  seminary  conducted 
by  the  Pietists,  the  experience  which  he  had  had  as  a  precep- 
tor in  several  families  that  entrusted  him  with  their  children, 
and  finally,  above  all  else,  his  profound  studies  on  human 
nature  and  his  exalted  moral  philosophy,  had  given  him  a 
capital  preparation  for  treating  educational  questions.     Pro- 
fessor at  the  University  of  Konigsberg,  he   several   times 
resumes  the  discussion  of  pedagogical  subjects  with  a  marked 
predilection  for  them,  and  the  notes  of  his  lectures,  collet-ted 
by  one  of  his  colleagues,  formed  the  little  Treatise  on  Peda- 
gogy which  we  are  about  to  analyze.1 

365.  HIGH  CONCEPTION  OF  EDUCATION.  —  In  the  opinion 
of  Kant,  the  art  of  educating  men,  with  that  of  governing 
them,  is  the  most  difficult  and  the  most  important  of  all.     It 
is  by  education   alone  that  humanity  can  be  perfected  and 
regenerated :  — 

1  See  the  French  translation  of  this  tract  at  the  end  of  the  volume,  pub- 
lished by  Monsieur  Barni,  under  the  title,  Elements  metaphysiques  de  la 
d  i<-trine  de  la  vertu.  Paris,  1855.  The  work  of  Kant  appeared  in  German 
in  1S03. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.      333 

"  It  is  pleasant  to  think  that  human  nature  will  always  be 
better  and  better  developed  by  education,  and  that  at  last 
there  will  thus  be  given  it  the  form  which  best  befits  it. 

"  To  know  how  far  the  omnipotence  of  education  can  go, 
it  would  be  necessary  that  a  being  of  a  superior  order  should 
undertake  the  bringing  up  of  men." 

But  in  order  that  it  may  attain  this  exalted  end, Education 
must  be  set  free  from  routine  and  traditional  methods.  It 
must  bring  up  children,  not  in  view  of  their  success  in  the 
present  state  of  human  society,  but"**  in  view  of  a  better  state, 
possible  in  the  future,  and  according  to  an  ideal  conception 
of  humanity  and  of  its  complete  destination.4*  •/£< 

366.  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OPTIMISM.  -  -  Kant  comes  near 
accepting  the  opinion  of  Rousseau  on  the  original  innocence 
of  man  and  the  perfect  goodness  of  his  natural  inclina- 
tions :  — 

"  It  is  said  in  medicine  that  the  physician  is  but  the  ser- 
vant of  nature.     This  is  true  of  the  moralist.     Ward  off  the   j 
bad  influences  from  without,  and  nature  can  be  trusted  to 
find  for  herself  the  best  way."  l 

Thus  Kant  does  not  tire  of  exalting  the  service  which 
Rousseau  had  rendered  pedagog}-,  in  recalling  educators  to 
the  confidence  and  respect  that  are  due  to  calumniated  human 
nature.  Let  us  add,  however,  that  the  German  philosopher 
is  not  content  to  repeat  Rousseau.  He  corrects  him  in 
affirming  that  man,  at  his  birth,  is  neither  good  nor  evil, 
because  he  is  not  naturally  a  moral  being.  He  does  not  be- 
come snch  till  he  raises  his  reason  to  the  conception  of  duty 
and  law.  In  other  terms,  in  the  infant  everything  is  in  germ. 


The  infant  is  a  being  in  preparation.  The  future  alone,  the 
development  which  he  will  receive  from  his  education,  will 
make  him  good  or  bad.  At  the  beginning,  he  has  but  inde- 


1  Extract  from  Kant's  Fragments  posthumes. 


THE   HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

terminate  dispositions,  and  evil  will  come,  not  from  a  definite 
inclination  of  nature,  but  solely  from  the  fact  that  we  will 
not  have  known  how  to  direct  it,  —  from  the  fact,  according 
to  Kant's  own  expression,  that  we  will  not  have  "  subjected 
nature  to  rules." 

367.  RESPECT  FOR  THE  LIBERTY  OF  THE  CHILD.  —  The 
psychological  optimism  of  Kant  inspires  him,  as  it  does 
Rousseau,  with  the  idea  of  a  negative  education,  respectful 
of  the  liberty  of  the  child  :  — 

"In  general,  it  must-be  noted  that  the  earliest  education 
should  be  negative  ;  that  is  to  say,  nothing  should  be  added 
to  the  precautions  taken  by  nature,  and  that  the  effort  should 
be  limited  to  the  preservation  of  her  work.  ...  It  is  well  to 
employ  at  first  but  few  helps,  and  to  leave  children  to  learn 
for  themselves.  Much  of  the  weakness  of  man  is  due,  not 
to  the  fact  that  nothing  is  taught  him,  but  to  the  fact  that 
:  false  impressions  are  communicated  to  him." 

Without  going  so  far  as  to  say  with  Rousseau  that  all 
dependence  with  respect  to  men  is  coutran-  to  order,  Kant 
took  great  care  to  respect  the  liberty  of  the  pupil.  He  com- 
plains of  parents  who  are  always  talking  about  "breaking 
the  wills  of  their  sons."  He  maintains,  not  without  reason, 
that  it  is  not  necessary  to  offer  much  resistance  to  children, 
if  we  have  not  begun  by  yielding  too  readily  to  their  caprices, 
and  by  always  responding  to  their  cries.  Nothing  is  more 
harmful  to  them  than  a  discipline  which  is  provoking  and 
degrading.  But,  in  his  zeal  for  human  liberty,  the  theorist 
of  the  autonomy  of  wills  goes  a  little  too  far.  He  fears,  for 
example,  the  tyranny  of  habits.  He  requires  that  they  be 
prevented  from  being  formed,  and  that  children  be  accus- 
tomed to  nothing.  He  might  as  well  demand  the  suppression 
of  all  education,  since  education  should  be  but  the  acquisition 
of  a  body  of  good  habits. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     335 

368.  STORIES  INTERDICTED.  —  In  the  education  of  the  in-  \ 
tellectual  faculties  or  taleuts,  which  he  calls  the  physical  cul-    I 
ture  of  the  soul,  as  distinguished  from  moral  culture,  which  J 
is  the  education  of  the  will,  Kant  also  approaches  Rousseau. 
He  proscribes  romances  and  stories.     "Children  have  an  ex- 
tremely active  imagination  which  has  no  need  of  being  devel- 
oped by  stories."     It  may  be  said  in  reply,  that  fables  and 
fictions,  at  the  same  time  that  they  develop  the  imagination, 
also  direct  it  and  adorn  it  with  their  own  proper  grace,  and 
may  even  lend  it  moral  support.    Rousseau,  notwithstanding    , 
the  ardor  of  his  criticisms  on  the  Fables  of  La  Fontaine,  him-  / 
self  admitted  the  moral  value  of  the  apologue. 

369.  CULTURE  OF  THE  FACULTIES.  —  That  which  distin- 
guishes Kant  as  an  educator  is  that  he  is  pre-occupied  with  . 
the  culture  of  the  faculties  much  more  than  with  the  acquisi-  | 
tion  of  knowledge.     He  passes  in  review  the  different  intel- 
lectual forces,  and  his  reflections  on  each  of  them  might  be 
collected  as  the  elements  of  an  excellent  system  of  educational 
psychology.     He  will  criticise,  for  example,  the  abuse  of 
memory  :  — 

"  Men  who  have  nothing  but  memory,"  he  says,  "  are  but     • 
living  lexicons,  and,  as  it  were,  the  pack-horses  of  Parnassus." 

For  the  culture  of  the  understanding,  Kant  proposes  "at 
first  to  train  it  passively  to  some  degree,"  by  requiring  of  the 
child  examples  which  illustrate  a  rule,  or,  on  the  contrary, 
the  rule  which  applies  to  particular  examples. 

For  the  exercise  of  the  reason,  he  recommends  the  Socratic  ' 
method,  and,  in  general,  for  the  development  of  all  theiac-  J 
ulties  of  the  mind,  he  thinks  that  the  best  way  of  proceeding  j 
is  to  cause  the  pupil  to  be  active  :  — 

"The  best  way  to  comprehend  is  to  do.  What  we  learn 
the  most  thoroughly  is  what  we  learn  to  some  extent  by 
ourselves." 


S36  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY, 

370.  DIFFERENT  KINDS  OF  PUNISHMENTS.  — Kaiit  has  made 
a  subtile  analysis  of  the  different  qualities  with  which  punish- 
ment  may   be   invested.      He   distinguishes   from  physical 
punishment,  moral  punishment,  which  is  the  better.     It  con- 
sists in  humiliating  the  pupil,  in  greeting  him  coolly,  "in 
encouraging  the  disposition  of  the  child  to  be  honored  and 
loved,   that  auxiliary  of  morality."     Physical  punishments 
ought  to  be  employed  with  precaution,  "to  the  end  that  they 
may  not  entail  servile  dispositions." 

Another  distinction  is  that  of  natural  punishments    and 

/    artificial  punishments.     The  first  are  preferable  to  the  second, 

because  they  are  the  very  consequences  of  the  faults  which 

have  been  committed;  "indigestion,  for  example,  which  a 

child  brings  on  himself  when  he  eats  too  much."     Another 

advantage  of  natural  punishment,  Kant  justly  remarks,  "  is 

!  that  man  submits  to  it  all  his  life." 

Finally,  Kant  divides  punishments  into  negative  and  posi- 
tive. The  first  are  to  be  used  for  minor  faults,  and  the 
others  are  to  be  reserved  for  the  punishment  of  conduct  that 
is  absolutely  bad. 

Moreover,  whatever  punishment  ma}-  be  applied,  Kant 
advises  the  teacher  to  avoid  the  appearance  of  feeling  malice 
f  towards  the  pupil :  — 

"The  punishments  we  inflict  while  exhibiting  signs  of 
anger  have  a  wrong  tendency." 

371.  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION.  —  At  first   view,   we    might 
be  tempted  to  think  that  Kant  has  adopted  the  conclusions 
of  Rousseau,  and  that,  like  him,  he  refuses  to  take  an  early 

1  Monsieur  Compayre  seems  to  give  his  sanction  to  the  "  Discipline  of 
Consequences."  I  think  that  Mr.  Fitch  has  correctly  stated  its  limitations 
(Lectures,  p.  117).  Kant  doubtless  borrowed  the  idea  from  Rousseau,  who 
employs  it  in  the  government  of  his  imaginary  pupil.  (See  Miss  "\Yorthing- 
ton's  translation  of  the  Emile,  p.  66.)  This  doctrine  is  the  basis  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  chapter  on  Moral  Education.  (P.) 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF    THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY.      337 

occasion  to   inculcate   in   the  child's  mind  the  notion  of  a 
.Supreme  Being:  — 

"  Religious  ideas  always  suppose  some  system  of  theology. 
Now,  how  are  we  to  teach  theology  to  the  young,  who,  far 
from  knowing  the  world,  do  not  yet  know  themselves?  How 
shall  the  young  who  do  not  yet  know  what  duty  is,  be  in  a 
condition  to  comprehend  an  immediate  duty  towards  God?" 

To  speak  of  religion  to  a  youug  man,  it  would  then  be  logical 
to  wait  till  he  is  in  a  condition  to  form  a  clear  and  fixed  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  God.  But  it  is  impossible  to  do 
this,  says  Kant,  because  the  young  man  lives  in  a  society 
where  he  hears  the  name  of  the  Divinity  spoken  at  each 
moment,  and  where  he  takes  part  in  continual  observances 
of  piety.  It  is  better,  then,  to  teach  him  at  an  early  hour 
true  religious  notions,  for  fear  that  he  may  borrow  from 
other  men  notions  that  are  superstitious  and  false.  In 
reality,  Kant  dissents  from  Rousseau  only  because,  re-estab- 
lishing the  conditions  of  real  life,  he  restores  Emile  to  society, 
no  longer  keeping  him  in  a  fancied  state  of  isolation.  What  a 
broad  and  noble  way,  moreover,  of  conceiving  religious  edu- 
cation !  The  best  way  of  making  clear  to  the  mind  of 
children  the  idea  of  God,  is,  according  to  Kant,  to  seek  an 
analogy  in  the  idea  of  a  human  father.  It  is  necessary, 
moreover,  that  the  conception  of  duty  precede  the  conception 
of  God  ;  that  morality  precede,  and  that  theology  follow. 
Without  morality,  religion  is  but  superstition ;  without 
morality,  the  pretended  religious  man  is  but  a  courtier,  a/ 
suitor  for  divine  favor. 

372.  MOUAL  CATECHISM. — Those  who  know  to  what  a 
height  Kant  could  raise  the  theory  of  morality,  will  not  be 
surprised  at  the  importance  which  he  ascribes  to  the  teaching 
of  morals. 

"Our  schools,"  he  says,  "are  almost  entirely  lacking  in 


338  '  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

one  thing  which,  however,  would  be  very  useful  for  training 
children  in  probity,  —  I  mean  a  catechism  on  duty.  It  should 
contain,  in  a  popular  form,  cases  concerning  the  conduct  to 
be  observed  in  ordinary  life,  and  which  would  always  naturally 
raise  this  question  :  Is  this  right  or  not?" 

He  had  begun  to  write  a  book  of  this  kind  under  the  title 
Moral  Catechism;1  and  he  would  have  desired  that  an  hour 
a  day  of  school  time  be  given  to  its  study,  "  in  order  to 
teach  pupils  to  know  and  to  learn  by  heart  their  duty  to  men, 
—  that  power  of  God  on  the  earth."  The  child,  he  says 
again,  would  there  learn  to  substitute  the  fear  of  his  own 
conscience  for  that  of  men  and  divine  punishment,  inward 
dignity  for  the  opinion  of  others,  the  intrinsic  value  of 
actions  for  the  apparent  value  of  words,  and,  finally,  a  serene 
and  cheerful  piety  for  a  sad  and  gloomy  devotion. 

[373.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  This  study  exhibits  the 
influence  of  philosophical  systems  on  education.  New  con- 
ceptions of  human  destiny,  new  theories  with  respect  to  the 
composition  of  human  nature,  or  a  new  hypothesis  concerning 
man's  place  in  nature,  determine  corresponding  changes  iu 
educational  theory. 

2.  Perhaps  the   broadest   generalization   yet   reached   in 
educational  theory  is  the    assumption    made    by  Condillac, 

f  that  the  education  of  each  individual  should  be  a  repetition 
of  civilization  in  petto.  With  Mr.  Spencer  this  hypothesis 
becomes  a  law. 

3.  In  theory,  the  secularization  of  education  has  begun. 
;    The  Church  is  to  lose  one  of  its  historical  prerogatives,  and 

the  modern  State  is  to  become  an  educator. 

1  Helvetius,  but  poorly  qualified  for  teaching  moral  questions,  had  had 
the  idea  of  a  Catevhisme  de  probiW.  Saint  Lambert  published,  in  1798,  a 
CaUchisme  universel. 


PHILOSOPHERS    OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.     339 

4.  Helvetius  typifies  what  may  be  called  the  plastic  theory 
in  education,  or  the  conception  that   the  teacher,   if  wise 
enough,  may  ignore  all  differences  in  natural   endowment. 
This  makes  man  the  victim  of  his  environment.     The  truth 
evidently  is  that  man  is  the  only  creature  which  can  bend 
circumstances  to  his  will ;  and  he  has  such  an  endowment  of 
power  in  this  direction  that  he  can  virtually  recreate  his  en- 
vironment and  thus  rise  superior  to  it.     And  farther  than 
this,  there  are  innate  differences  in  endowment  that  will  per- 
sist in  spite  of  all  that  education  can  do. 

5.  The  culture  value  of  literary  studies  is  justly  exhibited 
in  the  quotation  from  Marmontel,  and  in  particular  the  dis- 
ciplinary value  of  translation. 

6.  Education  for  training,  discipline,  or  culture,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  an  education  whose  chief  aim  is  to  impart 
knowledge,  receives  definite  recognition  from  Kant.] 


. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   ORIGIN   OF   LAY   AND  NATIONAL   INSTRUCTION.— 
LA   CHALOTAIS   AND   ROLLAND. 

JESUITS  AND  PARLIAMENTARIANS  J  EXPULSION  OF  THE  JESUITS  (1764)  ; 
GENERAL  COMPLAINTS  AGAINST  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  JESUITS  J 
EFFORTS  MADE  TO  REPLACE  THEM  ;  LA  CHALOTAIS  (1701-1785)  ;  HIS 
ESSAY  OX  NATIONAL  EDUCATION  (1763)  ;  SECULARIZATION  OF 
EDUCATION  J  PRACTICAL  END  OF  INSTRUCTION  ;  NEW  SPIRIT  IN 
EDUCATION  J  INTUITIVE  AND  NATURAL  INSTRUCTION  J  STUDIES 
OF  THE  EARLIEST  PERIOD  J  CRITICISM  OF  NEGATIVE  EDUCATION  ; 
HISTORY  AVENGED  OF  THE  DISDAIN  OF  ROUSSEAU  J  GEOGRAPHY  ; 
NATURAL  HISTORY  ;  PHYSICAL  RECREATIONS  J  MATHEMATICAL 
RECREATIONS;  STUDIES  OF  THE  SECOND  PERIOD;  THE  LIVING 
LANGUAGES;  OTHER  STUDIES;  THE  QUESTION  OF  BOOKS;  ARISTO- 
CRATIC PREJUDICES  ;  INSTRUCTION  WITHIN  THE  REACH  OF  ALL ; 
NORMAL  SCHOOLS  ;  SPIRIT  OF  CENTRALIZATION  J  TURGOT  (1727- 
1781)  J  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


374.  JESUITS  AND  PARLIAMKI\TTARIANS.  —  Of  the  educators 
of  the  eighteenth  century  of  whom  we  have  been  speaking 
up  to  the  present  time,  no  one  has  been  called  to  exercise  an 
immediate  and  direct  action  on  the  destinies  of  public  edu- 
cation ;  no  one  of  them  had  the  power  to  apply  the  doctrines 
which  were  so  dear  to  him  to  college  education  ;  so  that,  so 
far,  we  have  studied  the  theory  and  not  the  practice  of  edu- 
cation in  the  eighteenth  century. 

On  the  contrary,  the  members  of  the  French  Parliaments, 
after  having  solicited  and  obtained  from  the  king  the  expul- 
sion of  the  Jesuits,  made  memorable  efforts,  from  1762  up 
to  the  eve  of  the  Revolution,  to  supply  the  places  of  the 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      341 

teachers  whom  they  had  driven  away,  to  correct  the  faults 
of  the  ancient  education,  and  to  give  effect  to  the  idea, 
cherished  b}-  the  most  of  the  great  spirits  of  that  time,  of  a 
national  education  adapted  to  the  needs  of  civil  society. 
They  were  the  practical  organizers  of  instruction  ;  they  pre- 
pared the  foundation  of  the  French  University  of  the  nine- 
teenth century ;  they  resumed,  not  without  lustre,  the 
struggle  too  often  interrupted,  which  the  Jansenists  had 
sustained  against  the  Jesuits. 

375.  EXPULSION  OP  THE  JESUITS  (1764). — The  causes  of 
the  expulsion  of  the  Jesuits  were  doubtless  complex,  and, 
above  all  else,  political.  In  attacking  the  Company  of  Jesus, 
the  Parliaments  desired  especially  to  defend  the  interests  of 
the  State,  compromised  by  a  powerful  society  which  tended 
to  dominate  all  Christian  nations.  But  reasons  of  an  edu- 
cational character  had  also  some  influence  on  the  condemna- 
tion pronounced  against  the  Jesuits  by  all  the  Parliaments  of 
France.  From  all  quarters,  in  the  reports  which  were  drawn 
up  by  the  municipal  or  royal  officers  of  all  the  cities  where 
the  Jesuits  had  colleges,  complaint  is  made  of  the  scholastic 
methods  and  usages  of  the  Company.  Reforms  were  de- 
manded which  they  were  incapable  of  realizing. 

And  it  is  not  in  France  alone  that  the  faults  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  Jesuits  were  vigorously  announced.  In  the  edict 
of  1759,  by  which  the  king  of  Portugal  expelled  the  Jesuits 
from  his  kingdom,  it  was  said  :  "  The  study  of  the  human- 
ities has  declined  in  the  kingdom,  and  the  Jesuits  are  evi- 
dently the  cause  of  the  decadence  into  which  the  Greek  and 
Latin  tongues  have  fallen."  Some  years  later,  in  1768,  the 
king  of  Portugal  congratulated  himself  on  having  banished 
"the  moral  corruption,  the  superstition,  the  fanaticism,  and 
the  ignorance,  which  had  been  introduced  by  the  Society  of 
Jesus." 


342  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

376.  GENERAL  COMPLAINTS  AGAINST  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE 
JESUITS.  — Eveu  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Jesuits  were  still  addicted  to  their  old  routine,  and  even  their 
faults  were  aggravated  with  the  times. 

At  Auxerre,  complaint  is  made  that  pupils  study  in  their 
schools  only  a  few  Latin  authors,  and  that  the}-  leave  them 
without  ever  receiviug  into  their  hands  a  single  French 
author. 

At  Moulin s,  a  request  is  made  that  at  least  one  hour  a 
week  be  devoted  to  the  history  of  France,  which  proves  that 
the  Society  of  Jesus,  always  enslaved  to  its  immobile  formal- 
ism, did  not  grant  even  this  little  concession  to  the  teaching 
of  history. 

At  Orleans,  the  necessity  of  teaching  children  the  Frenc  h 
language  is  insisted  on. 

At  Montbrison,  the  wish  is  expressed  that  pupils  be  taught 
a  smattering  of  geography,  especially  of  their  own  country. 

At  Auxerre,  it  is  proved  that  in  the  teaching  of  philos- 
ophj-  the  time  is  employed  "  in  copying  and  learning  note- 
books filled  with  vain  distinctions  and  frivolous  questions." 

At  Montbrison,  the  request  is  made  "  that  the  rules  of 
reasoning  be  explained  in  French,  and  that  there  be  a  disuse 
of  debates  which  train  only  disputants  and  not  philosophers." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  pursue  this  stud}*,  and  to  collect 
from  these  reports  of  1762,  —  real  memorials  of  a  scholastic 
revolution,  —  all  the  complaints  of  public  opinion  against  the 
Jesuits.  Even  in  religion,  the  Company  of  Jesus  is  charged 
with  substituting  for  the  sacred  texts,  books  of  devotion  com- 
posed by  the  Fathers.  At  Poitiers,  a  demand  is  made  in 
favor  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  the  study  of 
which  was  wholly  neglected.  From  time  to  time  the  Jesuits 
were  accused  of  continually  mixing  religious  questions  with 
classical  studies  and  of  catechising  at  every  turn.  "  The 


ORIGIN  OL'^  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      343 

masters  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  forms  iu  the  College  of 
Auxerre  dogmatize  in  the  themes  which  they  dictate  to  the 
children."  Finally,  the  Company  of  Jesus  maintained  in 
the  schools  the  teaching  of  moral  casuistry  ;  it  encouraged 
bigotry  and  superstition  ;  it  relaxed  nothing  from  the  sever- 
ity of  its  discipline,  and  provoked  violent  recriminations 
among  some  of  its  former  pupils  who  had  preserved  a  pain- 
ful recollection  of  corrections  received  in  its  colleges.1 

377.  EFFORTS  MADE  TO  DISPLACE  THE  JESUITS.  —  The  Par- 
liaments, then,  did  nothing  more,  so  to  speak,  than  register 
the  verdict  of  public  opinion  everywhere  excited  against  the 
Jesuits.     But  while  they  heartily  joined  in  the  general  rep- 
robation, they  undertook  to  determine  the  laws  of  the  new 
education.     "  It  is  of  little  use  to  destroy,"  they  said,  "if 
we  do  not  intend  to  build.     The  public  good  and  the  honor 
of  the  nation  require  that  we  should  establish  a  civil  education 
which  shall  prepare  each  new  generation  for  filling  with  suc- 
cess the  different  employments  of  the  State."     It  is  not  just 
to  say  with   Michel  Breal,  that  "once  delivered  from  the 
Jesuits,  the  University  installed  itself  in  their  establishments 
and  continued  their   instruction."      Earnest   attempts  were 
made  to  reform  programmes  and  methods.      La  Chalotais, 
Guy  ton    de   Morveau,  Holland,  and    still   others    attempted 
by  their  writings,  and,  when  they  could,  by  their  acts,  to 
establish  a  system   of  education  which,  while   inspired   by 
Rollin  and  the  Jauseuists,  attempted  to  do  still  better. 

378.  LA  CHALOTAIS  (1701-1785).  —  Of  all  the  parliamen- 
tarians who  distinguished  themselves  in  the  campaign  under- 
taken towards  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  against 
the  pedagogy  of  the  Jesuits,  the  most  celebrated,  and  the 

1  See  the  pamphlet  published  iii  1764  entitled :  Me'moires  historiqucs  sur 
iame  ct  h-x  rt.,rr/-i-t<  urs  dcs  Je'suites. 


344  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

most  worthy  of  being  such,  is  undoubtedly  the  solicitor- 
general  of  the  Parliament  of  Bretagne,  Rene"  de  la  Chalotais. 
A  man  of  courage  and  character,  he  was  arrested  and  im- 
prisoned in  the  citadel  of  Saint  Malo  for  having  upheld  the 
franchise  of  the  province  of  Bretagne  ;  and  it  was  in  his 
prison,  in  1765,  that  he  drew  up  for  his  defence  an  eloquent 
and  impassioned  memorial,  of  which  Voltaire  said,  "  Woe 
to  every  sensitive  soul  that  does  not  feel  the  quivering  of  a 
fever  in  reading  it !  " 

379.  His  ESSAY  ON  NATIONAL  EDUCATION.  — The  Esscif  of 
La  Chalotais  appeared  in  1763,  one  year  after  the  EmiUe. 
Coming  after  the  ambitious  theories  of  a  philosopher  who, 
scorning   polemics   and   the   dissensions    of   his   time,    had 
written  only  for  humanity  and  the  future,  this  was  a  modest 
and   opportune  work,   the   effort   of  a   practical    man   who 
attempted  to  respond  to  the  aspirations  and  the  needs  of  his 
time.     Translated  into  several  languages,  the  Essai  cTeW/"-*/- 
tion  nationale  obtained  the  enthusiastic  approval  of  Diderot, 
and  also  of  Voltaire,  who  said,  "  It  is  a  terrible  book  against 
the  Jesuits,  all  the  more  so  because  it  is  written  with  moder- 
ation."   Grimm  carried  his  admiration  so  far  as  to  write,  "  It 
would  be  difficult  to  present  in  a  hundred  and  fifty  pages 
more  reflections  that  are  wise,  profound,  useful,  and  truly 
worthy  of  a  magistrate,  of  a  philosopher,  of  a  statesman." 
Too  completely  forgotten  to-day,  this  little  composition  of 
La  Chalotais  deserves  to  be  republished.     Notwithstanding 
some  prejudices  that  mar  it,  it  is  already  wholly  penetrated 
with  the  spirit  of  the  Revolution. 

380.  SECULARizATtON   OF   EDUCATION. — As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  whole  pedagogy  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  domi- 
nated by  the  idea  of  the  necessary  secularization  of  instruc- 
tion.   Thorough-going  Galileans  like  La  Chalotais  or  Rolland, 
dauntless  five-thinkers  like  Diderot  or  Helvetius,  all  believe 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      845 

ami  assert  that  public  instruction  is  a  civil  affair,  a  "  govern- 
ment undertaking,"  as  Voltaire  expressed  it.  All  wish  to 
substitute  lay  teachers  for  religious  teachers,  and  to  open 
civil  schools  upon  the  ruins  of  monastic  schools. 

"  "NVho  will  be  persuaded,"  says  Holland  in  his  report  of 
1708,  "  that  fathers  who  feel  an  emotion  that  an  ecclesiastic 
never  should  have  known,  will  be  less  capable  than  he  of 
educating  children  ?  " 

La  Chalotais  also  demands  these  citizen  teachers.  He 
objects  to  those  instructors  who,  from  interest  as  well  as 
from  principle,  give  the  preference  in  their  affections  to  the 
supernatural  world  over  one's  native  land. 

"I  do  not  presume  to  exclude  ecclesiastics,"  he  said, 
;'  but  I  protest  against  the  exclusion  of  laymen.  I  dare  claim 
for  the  nation  an  education  which  depends  only  on  the  State, 
because  it  belongs  essentially  to  the  State  ;  because  every 
State  has  an  inalienable  and  indefeasible  right  to  instruct  its 
members  ;  because,  finally,  the  children  of  the  State  ought  to 
be  educated  by  the  members  of  the  State."  This  does  not 
mean  that  La  Chalotais  is  irreligious  ;  but  he  desires  a  national 
religion  which  does  not  subordinate  the  interests  of  the 
country  to  a  foreign  power.  What  he  wants  especially  is, 
that  the  Church,  reserving  to  herself  the  teaching  of  divine 
truth,  abandon  to  the  State  the  teaching  of  morals,  and  the 
control  of  purely  human  studies.  He  is  of  the  same  opinion 
as  his  friend  Duclos,  who  said  :  — 

"It  is  certain  that  in  the  education  which  was  given  at 
Sparta,  the  prime  purpose  was  to  train  Spartans.  It  is  thus 
that_jn  every  State  the  purpose  should  be  to  enkindle  the 
spirit  of  citizenship  ;^and,  in  our  case,  to  train  Frenchmen, 
and  in  order  to  make  Frenchmen,  to  labor  to  make  men  of 
them."  1 

1  Duclos,  Considerations  sur  les  mcews  dece  sieclc.  Ch.  II.  frttr  /Vc/.M  •  - 
lion  et  lesprejiK/es. 


C4G  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

381.  PRACTICAL  PURPOSE  OF  INSTRUCTION. — The  partic- 
ular charge  brought  by  La  Chalotais  against  the  education  of 
his  time,  against  that  of  the  University  as  well  as  against 
that  of  the  Jesuits,  is,  that  it  does  not  prepare  children  for 
real  life,  for  life  in  the  State.     "A  stranger  who  should  visit 
our  colleges  might  conclude  that  in  France  we  think  only  of 
peopling  the  seminaries,  the  cloisters,   and  the   Latin  col- 
onies."    How  are  we  to  imagine  that  the  study  of  a  dead 
language,  and  a  monastic  discipline,  are  the  appointed  means 
for  training  soldiers,  magistrates,  and  heads  of  families? 

"  The  greatest  vice  of  education,  and  perhaps  the  most 
inevitable,  while  it  shall  be  entrusted  to  persons  who  have 
renounced  the  world,  is  the  absolute  lack  of  instruction  on 
the  moral  and  political  virtues.  Our  education  does  not 
affect  our  habits,  like  that  of  the  ancients.  After  having 
endured  all  the  fatigues  and  irksomeness  of  the  college,  the 
young  find  themselves  in  the  need  of  learning  in  what  consist 
the  duties  common  to  all  men.  They  have  learned  no  prin- 
ciple for  judging  actions,  evils,  opinions,  customs.  They 
have  everything  to  learn  on  matters  that  are  so  important. 
They  are  inspired  with  a  devotion  which  is  but  an  imitation 
of  religion,  and  with  practices  which  take  the  place  of  virtue, 
and  are  but  the  shadow  of  it." 

382.  INTUITIVE  AND  NATURAL  INSTRUCTION. — A  pupil  of 
the  sensational  school,  a  disciple  of  Locke  and  of  Condillao, 
La  Chalotais  is  too   much   inclined  to   misconceive,   in   the 
development  of  the  individual,  the  pla}r  of  natural  activities 
and  innate  dispositions.     But,  by  way  of  compensation,  his 
predilection  for  sensationalism  leads  him  to  excellent  thoughts 
on  the  necessity  of  beginning  with  sensible  objects  before 
advancing  to  intellectual  studies,  and  first  of  all  to  secure  an 
education  of  the  senses. 

"I  wish  nothing  to  be  taught  children  except  facts  whirl) 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      347 

are  attested  by  the  eyes,  at  the  age  of  seven  as  at  the  age  of 
thirty. 

"  The  principles  for  instructing  children  should  be  those 
by  which  nature  herself  instructs  them.  Nature  is  the  best 
of  teachers. 

"  Every  method  which  begins  with  abstract  ideas  is  not 
made  for  children. 

"  Let  children  see  many  objects ;  let  there  be  a  variety  of 
such,  and  let  them  be  shown  under  mam'  aspects  and  on 
various  occasions.  The  memory  and  the  imagination  of 
children  cannot  be  overcharged  with  useful  facts  and  ideas 
of  which  the}-  can  make  use  in  the  course  of  their  lives." 

Such  are  the  principles  according  to  which  La  Chalotais 
organizes  his  plan  of  studies. 

383.  THE  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  EDUCATION. — The  purpose, 
then,  is  to  replace  that  monastic  and  ultramontane  education 
(this  is  the  term  employed  by  La  Chalotais),  and  also  that 
narrow  education,  and  that  repulsive  and  austere  discipline, 
"•  which  seems  made  only  to  abase  the  spirit"  ;  that  sterile 
and  insipid  teaching,  "  the  most  usual  effect  of  which  is  to 
make  study  hated  for  life  "  ;  those  scholastic  studies  where 
young  men  k'  contract  the  habit  of  disputing  and  caviling"  ; 
and  those  ascetic  regulations  "  which  set  neatness  and  health 
at  defiance."  The  purpose  is  to  initiate  children  into  our 
most  common  and  most  ordinary  affairs,  into  what  forms 
the  conduct  of  life  and  the  basis  of  civil  society. 

"  Most  young  men  know  neither  the  world  which  they 
inhabit,  the  earth  which  nourishes  them,  the  men  who  supply 
their  needs,  the  animals  which  serve  them,  nor  the  workmen 
and  citizens  whom  they  employ.  They  have  not  even  any 
desire  for  this  kind  of  knowledge.  No  advantage  is  taken 
of  their  natural  curiosity  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  it. 


348  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

They  know  how  to  admire  neither  the  wonders  of  nature  nor 
the  prodigies  of  the  arts." 

This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  they  should  henceforth 
learn  all  that  up  to  this  time  the}'  had  been  permitted  to  be 
ignorant  of. 

384.  STUDIES   OF  THE   FIRST   PERIOD.  —  Education,    ac- 
cording to  La  Chalotais,  should  be  divided  into  two  periods : 
the  first  from  five  to  ten,  the  second  from  ten  to  seventeen. 

During  the  first  period,  we  have  to  do  with  children  who 
have  no  experience  because  they  have  seen  nothing,  who 
have  no  power  of  attention  because  they  are  incapable  of  any 
sustained  effort,  and  no  judgment  because  they  haA'e  not  yet 
any  general  ideas;  but  who,  by  way  of  compensation,  have 
senses,  memory,  and  some  power  of  reflection.  It  is  neces- 
sary, then,  to  make  a  careful  choice  of  the  subjects  of  study 
which  shall  be  proposed  to  these  tender  intelligences ;  and 
La  Chalotais  decides  in  favor  of  history,  geography,  natural 
history,  physical  and  mathematical  recreations. 

"  The  exercises  proposed  for  the  first  period,"  he  says, 
"  are  as  follows  :  learning  to  read,  write,  and  draw  ;  dancing 
and  music,  which  ought  to  enter  into  the  education  of  persons 
above  the  commonalty  ;  historical  narratives  and  the  lives  of 
illustrious  men  of  every  country,  of  every  age,  and  of  every 
profession  ;  geography,  mathematical  and  physical  recrea- 
tions ;  the  fables  of  La  Fontaine,  which,  whatever  may  be 
said  of  them,  ought  not  to  be  removed  from  the  hands  of 
children,  but  all  of  which  they  should  be  made  to  learn  by 
heart ;  and  besides  this,  walks,  excursions,  merriment,  and 
recreations  ;  I  do  not  propose  even  the  studies  except-  as 
amusements." 

385.  CRITICISM  OF  NEGATIVE  EDUCATION.  —  La  Chalotais 
is  often  right  as  against  Rousseau.     For  example,  he  has 
abundantly  refuted  the  Utopia  of  a  negative   education  in 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.       349 

which  nature  is  allowed  to  have  her  way,  and  which  consid- 
ers the  toil  of  the  centuries  as  of  no  account.  It  is  good  sense 
itself  which  speaks  in  reflections  like  these  :  — 

"  If  man  is  not  taught  what  is  good,  he  will  necessarily 
become  preoccupied  with  what  is  bad.  The  mind  and  the 
heart  cannot  remain  unoccupied.  .  .  .  On  the  pretext  of 
affording  children  an  experience  which  is  their  own,  they  are 
deprived  of  the  assistance  of  others'  experience." 

386.  HISTORY  AVENGED  OF  THE  DISDAIN  OF  ROUSSEAU. — 
The  sophisms  of  Rousseau  on  history  are  brilliantly  refuted. 
History  is  within  the  comprehension  of  the  youngest.     The 
child  who  can  understand  Tom  Thumb  and  Blue  Beard,  can 
understand  the  history  of  Romulus  and  of  Clovis.     More- 
over,   it   is   to   the    history   of   the  most  recent  times  that 
La  Chalotais  attaches  the  greatest  importance,  and  in  this 
respect  he  goes  beyond  his  master  Rollin  :  — 

"  I  would  have  composed  for  the  use  of  the  child  histories 
of  every  nation,  of  every  century,  and  particularly  of  the 
later  centuries,  which  should  be  written  with  greater  detail, 
and  which  should  be  read  before  those  of  the  more  remote 
centuries.  I  would  have  written  the  lives  of  illustrious  men 
of  all  classes,  conditions,  and  professions,  of  celebrated 
heroes,  scholars,  women,  and  children." 

387.  GEOGRAPHY. — La  Chalotais  does  not  separate  the 
study  of  geography  from  that  of  history,  and  he  requires 
that,  without  entering  into  dry  and  tedious  details,  the  pupil 
be  made  to  travel  pleasantly  through  different  countries,  and 
that  stress  be  put  '*  on  what  is  of  chief  importance  and  inter- 
est in  each  country,  such  as  the  most  striking  facts,  the 
native  land  of  great  men,  celebrated  battles,  and  whatever 
is   most   notable,    either    as   to   manners    and   customs,    to 
natural  productions,  or  to  arts  and  commerce." 


350  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

388.  NATURAL     HISTORY. — Another     study     especially 
adapted   to   children,    says   La    Chalotais    with    reasou,    is 
natural  history:    "The  principal  thing  is  first  to  show  the 
different  objects  just  as  they  appear  to  the  eyes.     A  repre- 
sentation of  them,  with  a  precise  and  exact  description,  is 
sufficient." 

"Too  great  detail  must  be  avoided,  and  the  objects  chosen 
must  be  such  as  are  most  directly  related  to  us,  which  are 
the  most  necessary  and  the  most  useful." 

"  Preference  shall  be  given  to  domestic  animals  over  those 
that  are  wild,  and  to  native  animals  over  those  of  other 
countries.  In  the  case  of  plants,  preference  shall  be  given 
to  those  that  serve  for  food  and  for  use  in  medicine." 

As  far  as  possible,  the  object  itself  should  be  shown,  so 
that  the  idea  shall  be  the  more  exact  and  vivid,  and  the 
impression  the  more  durable. 

389.  RECREATIONS  IN  PHYSICS.  —  La   Chalotais   explains 
I   that  he  means  by  this  phrase  observations,  experiments,  and 

the  simplest  facts  of  nature.  Children  should  early  be  made 
acquainted  with  thermometers,  barometers,  with  the  micro- 
scope, etc. 

390.  RECREATIONS  IN  MATHEMATICS.  —  All  this  is  excellent, 
and  La  Chalotais  enters  resolutely  into  the  domain  of  modern 
methods.      What  is  more  debatable  is  the  idea  of  putting 
geometry  and  mathematics  into  the  programme  of  children's 

}  studies,  under  this  erroneous  pretext,  that  "  geometry  pre- 
sents nothing  but  the  sensible  and  the  palpable."  Let  us 
grant,  however,  that  it  is  easier  to  conceive  "  clear  ideas  of 
bodies,  lines,  and  angles  that  strike  the  eyes,  than  abstract 
ideas  of  verbs,  declensions,  and  conjugations,  of  an  accusa- 
tive, an  ablative,  a  subjunctive,  an  infinitive,  or  of  the 
omitted  that." 


OEIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      351 

391 .  STUDIES  OF  THE  SECOND  PERIOD.  —  La  Chalotais  post- 
pones the  study  of  the  classical  languages  till  the    second 
period,  the  tenth  year.     The  course  of  study  for  this  second 
period  will  comprise:   1.  French  and  Latin  literature,  or  the 
humanities ;  2.  a  continuation  of  history,  geography,  math- 
ematics, and  natural  history  ;  3.  criticism,  logic,  and  meta- 
physics ;  4.  the  art  of  invention  ;  5.  ethics. 

La  Chalotais  complains  that  his  contemporaries  neglect 
French  literature,  as  though  we  had  not  admirable  models  in 
our  national  language.  Out  of  one  hundred  pupils  there  are 
not  five  who  will  find  it  useful  to  write  in  Latin  ;  while  there 
is  not  one  of  them  who  will  have  occasion  to  speak  or  write 
in  Greek,  and  to  construct  Latin  verses.  All,  on  the  con- 
trary, ought  to  know  their  native  language.  Consequently, 
our  author  suggests  the  idea  of  devoting  the  morning  session 
to  French,  and  that  of  the  afternoon  to  Latin,  so  that  the 
pupils  who  have  no  need  of  the  ancient  languages  may  pur- 
sue only  the  courses  in  French. 

392.  THE  LIVING  LANGUAGES. — La  Chalotais  thinks  the 
knowledge  of  two  living  languages  to  be  necessary,  "  the 
English  for  science,  and  the  German   for  war."      German 
literature  had  not  yet  produced  its  masterpieces,  and  it  is 
seen  that  at  this  period  the  utility  of  German  appears  espe- 
cially with  reference  to  military  affairs.     However  it  may  be, 
let  us  be  grateful  to  him  for  having  appreciated,  as  he  has 
done,  the  living  languages.     "  It  is  wrong,"  he  says,  u  to 
treat  them  nearly  as  we  treat  our  contemporaries,  with  a  sort 
of  indifference.      Without  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages 
there  is  no  real  and  solid  erudition  ;  and  there  is  no  complete 
erudition  without  the  others." 

393.  OTHER  STUDIES. — How  many  judicious  or  just  reflec- 
tions we  have  still  to  gather  from  the  Essay  on  National  Educa- 


352  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

ii'on,  as  upon  the  teaching  of  the  ancient  languages,  which  La 
Chalotais,  however,  is  wrong  in  restricting  to  too  small  a 
number  of  years  ;  upon  the  necessity  of  presenting  to  pupils 
as  subjects  for  composition,  not  puerile  amplifications,  or 
dissertations  on  facts  or  matters  of  which  they  are  ignorant, 
but  things  which  they  know,  which  have  happened  to  them, 
"their  occupations,  their  amusements,  or  their  troubles"; 
upon  logic  or  criticism,,  the  study  of  which  should  not  be 
deferred  till  the  end  of  the  course,  as  is  still  done  in  our  day  ; 
upon  philosophy,  which  is,  he  says,  "  the  characteristic  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  as  that  of  the  sixteenth  was  erudition, 
and  that  of  the  seventeenth  was  talent!"  La  Chalotais 
reserves  the  place  of  honor  to  ethics,  "  which  is  the  most 
important  of  all  the  sciences,  and  which  is,  as  much  as  any 
other,  susceptible  of  demonstration." 

394.  THE  QUESTION  OF  BOOKS.  —  In  tracing  his  programme 
of  studies,  so  new  in  many  particulars,  La  Chalotais  took 
into  account  the  difficulties  that  would  be  encountered  in 
assuring,  and,  so  to  speak,  in  improvising,  the  execution 
of  it,  at  a  time  when  there  existed  neither  competent  teachers 
nor  properly  constructed  books.  Teachers  especially,  lie 
said,  are  difficult  to  train.  But,  while  waiting  for  the  re- 
cruiting of  the  teaching  force,  La  Chalotais  puts  great  de- 
pendence on  elementary  books,  which  might,  he  thought,  be 
composed  within  two  years,  if  the  king  would  encourage  the 
publication  of  them,  and  if  the  Academies  would  put  them 
up  for  competition. 

"These  books  would  be  the  best  instruction  which  the  mas- 
ters could  give,  and  would  take  the  place  of  every  other 
method.  Whatever  course  we  may  take,  we  cannot  dispense 
with  new  books.  These  books,  once  m:ule.  would  make 
trained  teachers  unnecessary,  and  there  would  then  be  no 
longer  any  occasion  for  discussion  as  to  their  qualities, 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      353 

whether  they  should  be  priests,  or  married,  or  single.  All 
would  be  good,  provided  they  were  religious,  moral,  and 
knew  how  to  read ;  they  would  soon  train  themselves  while 
training  their  pupils." 

There  is  much  exaggeration  in  these  words.  The  book,  as 
we  know,  cannot  supply  the  place  of  teachers.  But  the  lan- 
guage of  La  Chalotais  was  adapted  to  circumstances  as  they 
existed.  He  spoke  in  this  way,  because,  in  his  impatience 
to  reach  his  end,  he  would  try  to  remedy  the  educational 
poverty  of  his  time,  and  supply  the  lack  of  good  teachers  by 
provisional  expedients,  by  means  which  he  found  within  his 
reach. 

395.  ARISTOCKATIC  PREJUDICES.  —  That  which  we  would 
expunge  from  the  book  of  La  Chalotais  is  his  opinion  on  pri- 
mary instruction.  Blinded  by  some  unexplained  distrust  of 
the  people,  and  dominated  by  aristocratic  tendencies,  he  com- 
plains of  the  extension  of  instruction.  He  demands  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  poor  do  not  extend  beyond  their  pursuits. 
He  bitterly  criticises  the  thirst  for  knowledge  which  is  begin- 
ning to  pervade  the  lower  classes  of  the  nation. 

"  Even  the  people  can  study.  Laborers  and  artisans  send 
their  children  to  the  colleges  of  the  smaller  cities.  .  .  .  When 
these  children  have  accomplished  a  summary  course  of  study 
which  has  taught  them  only  to  disdain  the  occupation  of  their 
father,  they  rush  into  the  cloisters  and  become  ecclesiastics ; 
or  they  exercise  judicial  functions,  and  often  become  subjects 
harmful  to  society.  The  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Doctrine 
(sic),  who  arc  called  ignorantins,  have  just  appeared  to  com- 
plete the  general  ruin  ;  they  teach  people  to  read  and  write 
who  ought  to  learn  only  to  draw,  and  to  handle  the  plane  and 
the  file,  but  have  no  disposition  to  do  it.  They  are  the  rivals 
or  the  successors  of  the  Jesuits." 

A  singular  force  of  prejudice  was  necessary  to  comvive  that 


854  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

the  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools  were  instructing  the 
people  too  highly. 

Let  it  be  said,  however,  towards  exonerating  La  Chalotais, 
that  he  perhaps  does  not  so  much  attack  the  instruction  in 
itself,  as  the  bad  way  in  which  it  is  given.  What  he  censures 
is  instruction  that  is  badly  conceived,  that  which  takes  people 
from  their  own  class.  In  some  other  passages  of  his  book 
we  see  that  he  would  be  disposed  to  disseminate  the  new 
education  among  the  ranks  of  the  people. 

"It  is  the  State,  it  is  the  larger  part  of  the  nation,  that 
must  be  kept  principally  in  view  in  education ;  for  twenty 
millions  of  men  ought  to  be  held  in  greater  consideration 
than  one  million,!  and  the  peasantry,  who  are  not  yet  a  class  in 
France,  as  they  are  in  Sweden,  ought  not  to  be  neglected  in  a 
system  of  instruction.  Education  is  equally  solicitous  that 
letters  should  be  cultivated,  and  that  the  fields  should  be 
plowed  ;  that  all  the  sciences  and  the  useful  arts  should  be 
perfected  ;  that  justice  should  be  administered  and  that  relig- 
ion should  be  taught ;  that  there  should  be  instructed  and 
competent  generals,  magistrates,  and  ecclesiastics,  and  skill- 
ful artists  and  citizens,  all  in  fit  proportion.  It  is  for  the 
government  to  make  each  citizen  so  pleased  with  his  condi- 
tion that  he  may  not  be  forced  to  withdraw  from  it." 

Let  us  quote  one  sentence  more,  which  is  almost  the  for- 
mula that  to-day  is  so  dear  to  the  friends  of  instruction  :  — 

"  We  do  not  fear  to  assert,  in  general,  that  in  the  condi- 
tion in  which  Europe  now  is,  the  people  that  are  the  most 
enlightened  will  always  have  the  advantage  over  those  who 
are  the  less  so." 

396.  GENERAL  CONCLUSION.  —  Notwithstanding  the  faults 
which  mar  it,  the  work  of  La  Chalotais  is  none  the  less  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  essays  of  the  earlier  French  pedagogy. 
"  La  Chalotais,"  says  Gre"ard,  "belongs  to  the  school  <f 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      355 

Rousseau  ;  but  on  more  than  one  point  he  departs  from  the 
plan  traced  by  the  master.  He  escapes  from  the  allurements 
of  the  paradox.  Relative^  he  has  the  spirit  of  moderation. 
He  is  a  classic  without  prejudices,  an  innovator  without 
temerity." 

His  book  is  pre-eminently  a  book  of  polemics,  written  with 
the  ardor  of  one  who  is  engaged  in  a  fight,  and  overflowing 
with  a  generous  passion.  What  noble  words  are  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 

"  Let  the  young  man  learn  what  bread  a  ploughman,  a 
day  laborer,  or  an  artisan  eats.  He  will  see  in  the  sequel 
how  they  are  deprived  of  the  bread  which  they  earn  with  so 
much  difficulty,  and  how  one  portion  of  men  live  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  other." 

In  these  lines,  which  breathe  a  sentiment  of  profound  pity 
for  the  disinherited  of  this  world,  we  already  hear,  as  it  were, 
the  signal  cry  announcing  the  social  reclamations  of  the 
French  Revolution. 

379.  ROLLAND  (1734-1794).  —  La  Chalotais,  after  hav- 
ing criticised  the  old  methods,  proposed  new  ones  ;  Holland 
attempted  to  put  them  in  practice.  La  Chalotais  is  a  polemic 
and  a  theorist ;  Rolland  is  an  administrator.  President  of  the 
Parliament  of  Paris,  he  presented  to  his  colleagues,  in  1768, 
a  Report  which  is  a  real  system  of  education.1  But  above 
all,  he  gave  his  personal  attention  to  the  administration  of 
the  College  Louis-le-Grand.  An  ardent  and  impassioned 
adversary  of  the  Jesuits,  he  used  every  means  to  put  public 
instruction  in  a  condition  to  do  without  them.  "  Noble  and 
wise  spirit,  patient  and  courageous  reason,  who,  for  twenty 
years,  even  during  exile  and  after  the  dissolution  of  his 
society,  did  not  abandon  for  a  single  moment  the  work  he 

1  See  the  Rec.ueil  of  the  works  of  President  Rolland,  printed  in  1783,  by 
order  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  College  Louis-le-Grand. 


356  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

had  undertaken,  but  brought  it,  almost  perfected,  to  the 
very  confines  of  the  Revolution  ;  a  heart  divested  of  every 
ambition,  who,  chosen  by  popular  wish,  and  by  the  cabinet 
of  the  king,  as  director  of  public  instruction,  obstinately 
entrenched  himself  in  the  peace  of  his  studious  retreat."  This 
is  the  judgment  of  a  member  of  the  University,  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Dubois,  director  of  the  Normal  School. 

No  doubt  Holland  is  not  an  original  educator.  "It  is  in 
Rollin's  Trait^  des  etudes,"  he  says,  "  that  every  teacher  will 
find  the  true  rules  for  education."  Besides,  he  borrowed 
ideas  from  La  Chalotais,  and  also  from  the  Memoires  which 
the  University  of  Paris  drew  up  in  1763  and  1764  at  the 
request  of  Parliament ;  so  that  the  interest  in  his  work  is 
less,  perhaps,  in  its  personal  views  than  in  the  indications 
it  furnishes  relative  to  the  situation  of  the  University  and 
its  tendeuc}'  towards  self- reformation. 

398.  INSTRUCTION  WITHIN  THE  REACH  OF  ALL.  —  At  least 
on  one  point  Rolland  is  superior  to  La  Chalotais ;  he  takes  a 
bold  stand  for  the  necessity  of  primary  instruction,  and  for 
the  progress  and  diffusion  of  human  knowledge. 

"  Education  cannot  be  too  widely  diffused,  to  the  end  that 
there  may  be  no  class  of  citizens  who  may  not  be  brought  to 
participate  in  its  benefits.  It  is  expedient  that  each  citizen 
receive  the  education  which  is  adapted  to  his  needs."  1 

It  is  true  that  Rolland  joins  in  the  wish  expressed  by  the 
University,  which  demanded  a  reduction  in  the  number  of 
colleges.  But  only  colleges  for  the  higher  studies  were  in 
question,  and  Rolland  thought  less  of  restricting  instruction 
than  of  proportioning  and  adapting  it  to  the  needs  of  the 
different  classes  of  society. 

"Each  one  ought  to  have  the  opportunity  to  receive  the 
education  which  is  adapted  to  his  needs.  .  .  .  Now  each 

1  Recueil,  etc.,  p.  25. 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      357 

soil,"  adds  Holland,  "  is  not  susceptible  of  the  same  culture 
and  the  same  product.  Each  mind  does  not  demand  the 
same  degree  of  culture.  All  men  have  neither  the  same 
needs  nor  the  same  talents  ;  and  it  is  in  proportion  to  these 
talents  and  these  needs  that  public  education  ought  to  be 
regulated." 

Holland  shared  the  prejudices  of  La  Chalotais  against  "the 
new  Order  founded  by  La  Salle  "  ;  but  none  the  less  on  this 
account  did  he  demand  instruction  for  all. 

"  The  knowledge  of  reading  and  writing,  which  is  the  key 
to  all  the  other  sciences,  ought  to  be  universally  diffused. 
Without  this  the  teachings  of  the  clergy  are  useless,  for  the 
memory  is  rarely  faithful  enough  ;  and  reading  alone  can 
impress  in  a  durable  manner  what  it  is  important  never  to 
forget."  Would  it  be  granted  by  every  one  to-day,  affected 
by  prejudices  that  are  ever  re-appearing,  that  "  the  laborer 
who  has  received  some  sort  of  instruction  is  but  the  more 
diligent  and  the  more  skillful  by  reason  of  it  "  ? 

399.  THE  NORMAL  SCHOOL.  —  We  shall  not  dwell  upon 
the  methods  and  schemes  of  study  proposed  by  Holland. 
Save  very  urgent  recommendations  relative  to  the  study  of 
the  national  history  and  of  the  French  language,  we  shall 
find  nothing  very  new  in  them.  What  deserve  to  be  pointed 
out,  by  way  of  compensation,  are  the  important  innovations 
which  he  wished  to  introduce  into  the  general  organization 
of  public  instruction. 

First  there  was  the  idea  of  a  higher  normal  school,  of  a 
seminary  for  professors.  The  University  had  already 
expressed  the  wish  that  such  an  establishment  should  bs 
founded.  To  be  convinced  how  much  this  pedagogical  sem- 
inary, conceived  as  far  back  as  170:5,  resembled  our  actual 
Normal  School,  it  suffices  to  note  the  following  details.  The 
establishment  was  to  be  governed  by  professors  drawn  from 


358  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

the  different  faculties,  according  to  the  different  subjects  of 
instruction.  The  young  men  received  on  competitive  exam- 
ination were  to  be  divided  into  three  classes,  corresponding 
to  the  three  grades  of  admission.  Within  the  establishment 
they  were  to  take  part  in  a  series  of  discussions,  after  a 
given  time  to  submit  to  the  tests  for  graduation,  and  finally 
to  be  placed  in  the  colleges.  Is  it  not  true  that  there  was 
no  important  addition  to  be  made  to  this  scheme  ?  Holland 
also  required  that  pedagogics  have  a  place  among  the  studies 
of  these  future  professors,  and  that  definite  and  systematic 
instruction  be  given  in  this  art,  so  important  to  the  teachers 
of  youth. 

Holland  does  not  stop  even  there.  He  provides  for 
inspectors,  or  visitors,  who  are  to  examine  all  the  colleges 
each  year.  Finally,  he  subjects  all  scholastic  establishments 
to  one  single  authority,  to  a  council  of  the  government,  to 
which  he  applies  the  rather  odd  title,  the  "  Bureau  of  Corre- 
spondence." 

400.  SPIRIT  OF  CENTRALIZATION.  —  Whatever  opinion 
may  be  formed  of  absolute  centralization,  which,  in  our  cen- 
tury, has  become  the  law  of  public  instruction,  and  has 
caused  the  disappearance  of  provincial  franchises,  it  is  certain 
that  the  parliamentarians  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  the 
first  to  conceive  it  and  desire  it,  if  not  to  realize  it.  Paris,  in 
Holland's  plan,  becomes  the  centre  of  public  instruction. 
The  universities  distributed  through  the  provinces  are  co-or- 
dinated and  made  dependent  on  that  of  Paris. 

"  Is  it  not  desirable,"  said  Holland,  "  that  the  good  taste 
which  everything  concurs  to  produce  in  the  capital,  be  dif- 
fused to  the  very  extremities  of  the  kingdom  ;  that  every 
Frenchman  participate  in  the  treasures  of  knowledge  which 
are  there  accumulating  from  day  to  day  ;  that  the  young  men 
who  have  the  same  country,  who  are  destined  to  serve  the  same 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      359 

prince  and  to  fulfill  the  same  functions,  receive  the  same  les- 
sons and  be  imbued  with  the  same  maxims  ;  that  one  part  of 
France  be  not  under  the  clouds  of  ignorance  while  letters 
shed  the  purest  light  in  another ;  in  a  word,  that  the  time 
come  when  a  young  man  educated  in  a  province  cannot  be 
distinguished  from  one  who  has  been  trained  in  the  cap- 
ital?" And  he  adds  that  "  the  only  means  for  attaining  an 
end  so  desirable  is  to  make  Paris  the  centre  of  public  instruc- 
tion." 

Besides  the  gain  that  will  thus  accrue  to  instruction,  Holland 
sees  this  other  advantage,  that,  through  uniformity  in  instruc- 
tion, there  will  be  secured  a  uniformity  in  manners  and  in 
laws.  By  means  of  a  uniform  education,  "the  young  men 
of  all  the  provinces  will  divest  themselves  of  all  their  preju- 
dices of  birth ;  they  will  form  the  same  ideas  of  virtue  and 
justice ;  they  will  demand  uniform  laws,  which  would  have 
offended  their  fathers." 

By  this  means,  finally,  there  will  be  developed  a  national 
spirit,  a  national  character,  and  a  national  jurisprudence, 
"  the  only  means  of  recreating  love  of  country."  Is  it  not 
true  that  the  great  magistrates  of  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  deserve  also  to  be  counted  among  the  founders  of 
French  unity? 

401.  TURGOT  (1727-1781). — In  his  Memoires  to  the  king 
(1775),  Turgot  set  forth  analogous  ideas,  and  also  demanded 
the  formation  of  a  council  of  public  instruction.  He  made 
an  eloquent  plea  for  the  establishment  of  a  civil  and  national 
education  which  should  be  extended  to  the  country  at  large. 

"  Your  kingdom,  Sir,  is  of  this  world.  Without  opposing 
any  obstacle  to  the  instructions  whose  object  is  higher,  and 
which  already  have  their  rules  and  their  expounders,  I 
think  I  can  propose  to  you  nothing  of  more  advantage  to 
your  people  than  to  cause  to  be  given  to  all  your  subjects  an 


360  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

instruction  which  shows  them  the  obligations  they  owe  to 
society  and  to  your  power  which  protects  them,  the  duties 
which  those  obligations  impose  on  them,  and  the  interest 
which  they  have  in  fulfilling  those  duties  for  the  public  good 
and  their  own.  This  moral  and  social  instruction  requires 
books  expressly  prepared,  by  competition,  and  with  great 
care,  and  a  schoolmaster  in  each  parish  to  teach  them  to 
children,  along  with  the  art  of  writing,  reading,  counting, 
measuring,  and  the  principles  of  mechanics." 
/  "The  study  of  the  duty  of  citizenship  ought  to  be  the 
V  foundation  of  all  the  other  studies  .T"  ^^fas 

"  There  are  methods  and  establishments  for  training 
geometricians,  physicists,  and  painters,  but  there  are  none 
for  training  citizens." 

In  a  word,  La  Chalotais,  Holland,  Turgot,  and  some  of 
their  contemporaries,  were  real  precursors  of  the  French 
Revolution  in  the  matter  of  education.  At  the  date  of  1762 
the  scholastic  revolution  began,  at  least  so  far  as  secondary 
instruction  is  concerned.  The  Parliaments  of  that  period 
conceived  the  plan  of  the  University  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, and  prepared  for  the  work  of  Napoleon  I.  But  they 
left  to  the  men  of  the  Revolution  the  honor  of  being  the  first 
to  organize  primar}'  instruction. 

[402.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  This  study  exhibits  the 
evils  brought  upon  a  country  by  an  education  controlled  and 
administered  by  a  dominant  Church  for  the  attainment  of 
its  own  ends ;  and  also  the  efforts  of  a  nation  to  save  itself 
from  imminent  disaster  by  making  the  State  the  great  public 
educator. 

2.  The  right  of  the  State  to  self-preservation  is  the  vindi- 
cation of  its  right  to  control  and  direct  public  education. 
The  State  thus  becomes  the  patron  of  the  public  school ; 


ORIGIN  OF  LAY  AND  NATIONAL  INSTRUCTION.      361 

the  product  it  requires  is  good  citizenship ;  and  for  the  sake 
of  securing  this  product  the  State  endows  the  school,  wholly 
or  in  part. 

3.  The  situation  in  France,  as  described  in  this  study,  is 
an  aggravated  case  of  what  may  occur  whenever  education  is 
administered  by  a  class  having  special  interests  and  ambi- 
tious ;  and  under  some  form  there  must  be  the  intervention 
of  the  State  as  a  means  of  protecting  its  own  interests. 

4.  When  education  is  administered  in  the  main   by  the 
literary  class,  there  is  some  danger  that  the  instruction  may 
not  be  that  which  is  best  adapted  to  the   needs   of   other 
classes.] 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  —  MIRABEAU,  TALLEYRAND, 
CONDORCET. 

CONTRADICTORY  JUDGMENTS  ON  THE  WORK  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLU- 
TION; GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  THAT  WORK;  THE  STATE  OF  PRI- 
MARY INSTRUCTION;  WHAT  WAS  TAUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS;  DISCIPLINE; 
THE  SITUATION  OF  TEACHERS;  THE  RECRUITMENT  OF  TEACHEKS  ; 
WHAT  THE  SCHOOL  ITSELF  WAS ;  THE  PECULIAR  WORK  OF  THE 
REVOLUTION;  THE  CAHIERS  OF  1789;  MIRABEAU  (1749-1791)  AND 
HIS  TRAVAIL  SUR  L'lNSTRUCTION  PUBLIQUE  J  DANGERS  OF 
IGNORANCE  J  LIBERTY  OF  TEACHING  J  THE  CONSTITUENT  ASSEMBLY 
AND  THE  RAPPORT  OF  TALLEYRAND;  TALLEYRAND  (1758-1838); 
POLITICAL  PRINCIPLES  OF  UNIVERSAL  INSTRUCTION;  FOUR  GRADES 
OF  INSTRUCTION  ;  POLITICAL  CATECHISM  J  INDEPENDENT  MORALITY  J 
THE  LEGISLATIVE  ASSEMBLY  AND  THE  RAPPORT  OF  CONDORCET  J 
CONDORCET  (1743-1794);  GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS  ON  EDUCATION; 
INSTRUCTION  AND  MORALITY;  INSTRUCTION  AND  PROGRESS;  LIBER- 
ALITY OF  CONDORCET;  FIVE  GRADES  OF  INSTRUCTION;  PURPOSE 
AND  PROGRAMME  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION;  IDEA  OF  COURSES 
FOR  ADULTS;  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN;  PREJUDICES;  FINAL 
JUDGMENT;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


404.  CONTRADICTORY  JUDGMENTS  ON  THE  WORK  OF  THE 
REVOLUTION. — An  historian  of  education  in  France,  Tliery. 
opens  his  chapter  on  the  Revolution  with  these  contemptuous 
words,  "  One  does  not  study  a  void,  one  does  not  analyze  a 
negation."1  A  more  recent  historian  of  public  instruction 
during  the  Revolution,  Albert  Duruy,  arriving  at  the  work 
of  Condorcet,  certainly  the  most  important  undertaking  of 

1  Thery,  Histoire  de  I'education  en  France.  Paris,  1861,  Tome  II.  p.  188. 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  363 

the  pedagogy  of  the  Revolution,  does  not  hesitate  to  record 
this  absolute  and  summary  judgment:  "We  are  now  no 
longer  in  the  real  and  in  the  possible  ;  we  are  travelling  in 
the  laud  of  chimeras  ;  we  are  soaring  in  space  at  heights 
which  admit  of  only  ideal  attainment."1 

How  easy  it  is  to  say  this !  To  believe  these  facile 
judges,  one  who  would  estimate  the  efforts  of  the  Revolu- 
tion in  the  matter  of  public  instruction  would  have  to  choose 
between  a  nothing  and  a  chimei-a.  The  men  of  the  Revolu- 
tion have  done  nothing,  say  some  ;  they  are  dreamers  and 
idealists,  say  others. 

These  assertions  do  not  bear  examination.  For  every 
impartial  observer  it  is  certain  that  the  Revolution  opened  a 
new  era  in  education,  and  the  proof  of  this  is  to  be  found  in 
the  vei%y  documents  that  our  opponents  so  triflingly  condemn, 
and  the  practical  spirit  of  which  they  misconceive. 

405.  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  THAT  WORK.  —  It  is  not 
that  the  men  of  the  Revolution  were  educators  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  term.  The  science  of  education  is  not  indebted 
to  them  for  new  methods.  They  have  not  completed  the 
work  of  Locke,  of  Rousseau,  and  of  La  Chalotais ;  but 
they  were  the  first  to  attempt  a  legislative  organization  of  a 
vast  system  of  public  instruction.  It  is  just  to  place  them 
in  the  front  rank  of  the  men  who  might  be  called  "  the  poli- 
ticians of  education."  Doubtless  they  lacked  time  for  apply- 
ing their  ideas,  but  they  had  at  least  the  merit  of  having 
conceived  these  ideas,  and  of  having  embodied  them  in 
legislative  acts.  The  principles  which  we  proclaim  to-day, 
they  formulated.  The  solutions  which  we  attempt  to  put  in 
practice  after  a  century  of  waiting,  were  decreed  by  them. 
The  reader  who  will  follow  the  long  series  of  reports  and 

1  Albert  Duruy,  L' instruction  publique  et  la  Revolution,  p.  80. 


364  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

decrees  which  constitutes  the  pedagogical  work  of  the  Rev- 
olution will  have  witnessed  the  genesis  of  popular  instruc- 
tion in  France. 

406.  THE  STATE  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.  —  In  order 
to  form  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  merits  of  the  men  of 
the  Revolution,  it  is  first  necessaiy  to  consider  in  what  a 
deplorable  state  they  found  primary  instruction.  What  a 
contrast  between  that  which  they  hoped  to  do  and  the  actual 
situation  in  1 789  !  I  very  well  know  that  fancy  sketches 
have  been  drawn  of  the  old  regime.  A  very  showy  enu- 
meration has  been  made  of  the  number  of  colleges  ;  but  we 
have  not  been  told  how  many  of  these  colleges  had  no  pro- 
fessors, and  how  many  had  no  pupils.  And  so  of  the 
schools  ;  they  are  found  everywhere,  but  it  remains  to  be 
shown  what  was  taught  in  them,  and  whether  anything  was 
taught  in  them.1 

Party  writers  who  are  bound  to  gainsay  the  work  of  the 
French  Revolution  in  the  matter  of  education,  generally  put 
under  contribution,  to  serve  their  political  prejudices,  the  old 
communal  archives.  They  cite  imaginary  statistics  which 
prove,  for  example,  that  in  the  diocese  of  Rouen,  in  1718, 
there  were  855  schools  for  boys,  and  306  schools  for  girls, 
for  a  territory  of  1159  parishes. 

It  is  first  necessary  to  verify  these  statistics,  whose  accu- 
racy has  not  been  demonstrated,  and  whose  figures  were 
evidently  obtained  only  by  counting  a  school  wherever  the 
rector  of  the  parish  gave  lessons  in  reading  and  in  the  cate- 
chism to  three  or  four  children. 

But  there  are  other  replies  to  make  to  the  traducers  of  the 
Revolution  who  tax  their  ingenuity  to  prove  that  instruction 
was  flourishing  under  the  old  regime,  and  that  the  Revolution 

1  J.  Simon,  Dieu,patrie,  et  liberte,  p.  11. 


THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION. 

destroyed  more  than  it  created.  With  this  assumed  efflo- 
rescence of  schools  of  which  we  hear,  it  is  necessary  to 
contrast  the  results  as  shown  by  authentic  statistics  of  the 
number  of  illiterates.  In  1790  there  was  53  per  cent  of  men 
and  73  per  cent  of  women  who  could  not  sign  their  names 
to  their  marriage  contracts. 

Besides,  we  must  inquire  what  was  taught  in  these  pre- 
tended schools,  how  many  children  attended  them,  and  what 
was  the  material  and  moral  condition  of  the  teachers  who 
directed  them. 

407.  WHAT  WAS  TAUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS.  —  Instruction 
was  reduced  to  the  catechism,  to  reading  and  writing.  On 
this  point  there  can  be  no  dispute.  The  official  pro- 
gramme of  the  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools  did  not  go 
beyond  this.  The  ordinance  of  Louis  XIV.,  dated  in  1698, 
has  been  pompously  quoted. 

"•  We  would  have  appointed,"  it  is  there  said,  "as  far  as 
it  shall  be  possible,  masters  and  mistresses  in  all  the  par- 
ishes where  there  are  none,  to  instruct  all  children,  and  in 
particular  those  whose  parents  have  made  profession  of  the 
pretended  reformed  religion,  in  the  catechism  and  the  prayers 
which  are  necessary  ;  to  take  them  to  mass  on  every  work 
day  ;  and  also  to  teach  reading  and  writing  to  those  who  will 
need  this  Jcnotdedge." 

But  does  not  this  very  text  support  those  who  maintain 
that  the  Monarchy  and  the  Church  have  never  encouraged 
primary  instruction  except  as  required  by  the  necessities  of 
the  struggle  against  heresy,  and  that  primary  instruction 
under  the  old  regime  was  scarcely  more  than  an  instrument 
of  religious  domination? 

Most  often  the  school  was  simply  a  place  to  which  parents 
sent  their  children  for  temporary  care.  Writing  was  not 
always  taught  in  it.  A  school-mistress  of  Haute-Mamc 


366  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

was  forbidden  to  teach  writing  "  for  fear  her  pupils  might 
employ  their  knowledge  in  writing  love-letters." 

408.  DISCIPLINE.  —  Corporal  punishments  were  more  than 
ever  the  order  of  the  day.     The  bishop  of  Montpellier,  at 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  forbids,  it  is  true,  beat- 
ing with  sticks,  kicks,  and  raps  on  the  head  ;  but  he  author- 
izes the  ferule  and  the  rod,  on  the  condition  that  the  patient 
be  not  completely  exposed. 

409.  CONDITION  OF  THE  TEACHERS.  —  That  which  is  graver 
still  is  that  the  teachers  themselves  (I  speak  of  lay  teachers, 
who,  it  is  true,  were  not  numerous)  lived  in  a  wretched  con- 
dition, without   material   independence    and  without   moral 
dignity.     In  general,  there  were  no  fixed  salaries.     Wages 
varied  from  40  to  200  francs,  arbitrarily  fixed  by  the  vestry- 
board  or  by  the  community,  in  return  for  a  great  number  of 
services  the  most  various  and  the  least  exalted.     The  school- 
masters  were   far   less   teachers   than    sextons,  choristers, 
beadles,  bell-ringers,  clock-makers,  and  even  grave-diggers. 
"  Attendance  at  marriages  and  at  burials  was  counted  at  the 
rate  of  15  sols  and  dinner  for  marriages,  and  20  sols  for 
burials."      And  Albert  Duruy  concludes  that  in  this  there 
were  substantial  advantages  to  the  school-masters  ; 1  —  advan- 
tages dearly  bought  in  ever}-  case,  and  repudiated  by  those 
who  were  interested  in  them.     "The  more  services  we  ren- 
der the  community,"  said  the  teachers  of  Bourgogne  in  their 
complaints  in  1789,  "the  more  we  are  degraded."2     The 
school-masters  were  scarcely  more  than  the  domestics  of  the 


1  Albert  Duruy,  073.  cit.,  p.  16. 

2  Dole'ances  presented  to  the  States-Gene;  al  by  the  teachers  of    the 
smaller  cities,  hamlets,  and  villages  of  Bourgogne. 


THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION.  367 

In  order  to  live,  they  were  not  only  obliged  to  accept 
these  church  services,  but  they  also  became  shoemakers, 
tailors,  innkeepers,  millers,  etc.  The  teacher  of  the  com- 
mune of  Angles,  in  the  High  Alps,  was  a  "  barbers' 
surgeon." 

Thus  there  was  no  assured  salary,  and  consequently  no 
moral  consideration.  "  In  the  communes,  teachers  were 
regarded  as  strangers  and  not  as  citizens  ;  like  tramps  and 
vagrants,  they  were  not  admitted  to  the  assemblies  of  the 
commune." 

410.  THE  RECRUITMENT  OF   TEACHERS.  —  Nowhere  were 
there   normal   schools   for   the    training   of  teachers.     The 
schools   were    entrusted   to   the   first   comer.      The   bishop 
granted  his  approbation,  or  permission   to  teach,  after   an 
examination  of  the    most   summary  kind.       The    duties   of 
teaching  were  the  means  of  subsistence  which  were  accepted 
without  call  and  without  serious  preparation.     In  Provence, 
school-masters  attended  kinds  of  "teachers'  fairs"  for  the 
purpose  of  being  hired.     In  the  Alps,  teachers  were  numer- 
ous, but  only  in  winter.       They  tarried  in  the  plain  and  in 
the  valleys  only  during  the  inclement  season.     They  returned 
home  for  the  labors  of  the  summer. 

Consequently,  most  of  the  schools  existed  only  in  name. 
"  The  schools,"  we  are  told,1  "  were  in  vacation  for  four  or 
five  months."  For  a  half  of  the  year,  the  school-masters 
were  free  to  follow  another  trade,  or,  rather,  to  devote  them- 
selves more  completely  to  their  ordinary  trade,  which  their 
school  duties  did  not  always  interrupt. 

41 1.  WHAT  THE  SCHOOL  ITSELF  WAS.  —  School-houses  were 
most  frequently  merely  wretched  huts,  wooden  cots,  and  nar- 
row ground-floors,  badly  lighted,  which  served  at  the  same 

1  A.  Duruy,  op.  cit.,  p.  10. 


368  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

time  as  a  domicile  for  the  school-master  and  his  family,  and 
as  a  class-room  for  pupils.  Benches  and  tables  were  things 
rarely  seen,  and  pupils  wrote  while  standing. 

In  a  word,  the  state  of  primary  instruction,  when  the 
States-General  opened  in  1789,  was  as  follows:  schools 
few  in  number  and  poorly  attended  ;  few  lay  teachers,  trained 
no  one  knows  how,  without  thorough  instruction,  and,  as 
they  themselves  said,  "degraded"  by  their  inferior  position  ; 
few  or  no  elementary  books  ;  gratuity  only  partial ;  finally, 
a  general  indifference  for  elementary  instruction,  which  phil- 
osophers like  Voltaire,  and  Rousseau,  and  Parliamentarians 
like  La  Chalotais,  themselves  lightly  esteemed. 

412.  THE  PROPER  WORK  OF  THE  REVOLUTION.  — I  do  not 
say  that  the  Revolution  accomplished  all  that  there  was  to  be 
attempted  in  order  to  bring  instruction  up  to  the  needs  of  the 
new  society  ;  but  it  purposed  to  do  this.     Every  time  a  lib- 
eral ministr}*  has  decided  to  work  for  the  promotion  of  in- 
struction, it  has  revived  its  plans  ;  and  it  is  these  same  plans 
that  by  a  vigorous  effort  public  authority  has  attempted  to 
realize  in  recent  times. 

413.  THE  REPORTS  OF  1789.  — Alread}-,  in  the  reports  of 
1789,  public  opinion  vigorously  pronounced  itself  in  favor  of 
educational  reforms.       "  The  cahiers   of    1789,  even   those 
of  the  clergy  and  the  nobility,  demand  the  reorganization  of 
public  instruction  on  a  comprehensive   plan.      The  cahiers 
of  the  clergy  of  Rodez  and  of  Saumur  demand  '  that  there 
may  be  formed  a  plan  of  national  education  for  the  young ' ; 
those  of  Lyons,  that  education  be  restricted  '  to  a  teaching 
body  whose  members  may  not  be  removable  except  for  neg- 

1  ligence,  misconduct,  or  incapacity  ;  that  it  may  no  longer  be 
conducted  according  to  arbitrary  principles,  and  that  all  pub- 
lic instructors  be  obliged  to  conform  to  a  uniform  plan 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  369 

adopted  by  the  States-General.'  The  cahiers  of  the  nobility 
of  Lyons  insist  that  '  a  national  character '  be  impressed  on 
the  education  of  both  sexes.  Those  of  Paris  demand  '  that 
public  education  be  perfected,  and  extended  to  all  classes  of 
citizens.'  Those  of  Blois,  '  that  there  be  established  a  coun- 
cil composed  of  the  most  enlightened  scholars  of  the  capital 
and  of  the  provinces  and  of  the  citizens  of  the  different 
orders,  to  form  a  plan  of  national  education,  for  the  use  of 
all  the  classes  of  society,  and  to  edit  elementary  treatises.'  "  l 

414.  MIRABEAU  (1749-1791).  —  From  the  first  days  of 
the  Revolution,  pedagogical  literature  abounds,  and  gives  evi- 
dence  of   the   ever-growing   interest  which   public   opinion 
attaches  to  educational  questions.     The  Oratorians,  of  whom 
La  Chalotais  said,  "  that  they  were  free  from  the  prejudices 
of  the  school  and  of  the  cloister,  and  that  they  were  citi- 
zens," present  to  the  National  Assembly  a  series  of  scholastic 
plans.     On  its  part,  the  Assembly  sets  itself  at  work  ;  Tal- 
leyrand prepares  his  great  report,  and  Mirabeau  embodies  his 
own  reflections  in  four  eloquent  discourses. 

Mirabeau's  discourses,  published  after  his  death  through 
the  good  offices  of  his  friend  Cabanis,  had  the  following 
titles  :  1.  Draft  of  a  Law  for  the  Organization  of  the  Teach- 
ing Body;  2.  Public  and  Military  Festivals;  3.  Organiza- 
tion of  a  National  Lycee;  4.  The  Education  of  the  Heir 
Presumptive  of  the  Crown. 

415.  THE  DANGERS  OF  IGNORANCE.  —  With  what  brilliancy 
the  illustrious  orator  made  appear  the  advantages  and  the 
necessity  of  instruction ! 

"  Those  who  desire  that  the  peasant  may  not  know  how 
to  read  or  write,  have  doubtless  made  a  patrimony  of  his 

1  See  the  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic,  Article  FRANCE. 


370  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

ignorance,  and  their  motives  are  not  difficult  to  appreciate  ; 
but  they  do  not  know  that  when  they  have  made  a  wild  beast 
of  a  man,  they  expose  themselves  to  the  momentary  danger 
of  seeing  him  transformed  into  a  savage  beast.  Without  in- 
telligence there  is  no  morality.  But  on  whom,  then,  is  it 
important  to  bestow  intelligence,  if  it  is  not  npon  the  rich? 
Is  not  the  safeguard  of  their  enjoyments  the  moralit}-  of  the 
people?  Through  the  influence  of  the  laws,  through  that  of 
a  wise  administration,  through  the  efforts  to  which  each  one 
should  be  inspired  by  the  hope  of  ameliorating  the  condition 
of  his  fellows,  exert  yourselves,  public  and  private  citizens, 
to  diffuse  in  all  quarters  the  noble  fruits  of  knowledge. 
Believe  that  in  dissipating  one  single  error,  in  propagating 
one  single  wholesome  truth,  you  will  do  something  for  the 
happiness  of  the  human  race  ;  and  whoever  you  are,  do  not 
have  the  least  doubt  that  it  is  only  by  this  means  that  you 
can  assure  your  own  happiness." 

But  through  some  inexplicable  spirit  of  timidity,  Mirabeau 
did  not  draw  from  these  principles  the  consequences  that 
they  permit.  He  does  not  admit  that  the  State  can  impose 
the  obligation  to  attend  school. 

"Society,"  he  says,  "has  not  the  right  to  prescribe  in- 
struction as  a  duty.  .  .  .  Public  authority  has  not  the  right, 
with  respect  to  the  members  of  the  social  body,  to  go  bc3-ond 
the  limits  of  watchfulness  against  injustice  and  of  protection 
against  violence.  ..."  "  Society,"  he  adds,  "  can  exact  of 
each  one  only  the  sacrifices  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  liberty  and  the  safety  of  all." 

Mirabeau  forgets  that  the  obligation  to  send  children  to 
school  is  exactly  one  of  those  necessary  sacrifices  which  the 
State  has  the  right  to  impose  on  parents. 

Hostile  to  obligation,  Mirabeau  feels  no  greater  partisan- 
ship for  gratuity :  — 


THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION.  371 

"Gratuitous  education,"  he  said,  "is  paid  for  by  every- 
body, while  its  fruits  are  immediately  gathered  by  only  a 
small  number  of  individuals." 

41 G.  LIBERTY  OF  TEACHING.  —  Like  so  many  other  gener- 
ous spirits,  Mirabeau  cherished  the  dream  of  the  most  com- 
plete liberty  of  teaching.1 

"Your  single  purpose,"  he  said  to  the  members,  "  is  to  give 
to  man  the  use  of  all  his  faculties,  to  make  him  enjoy  all  his 

1  What  is  meant  by  "  liberty  of  teaching  "  will  be  better  understood  from 
the  following  quotations  from  the  Dictiounaire  de  Pedagoyie,  Premiere 
Partie,  p.  1575  ct  scq. :  — 

"  Liberty  of  teaching,  in  a  country  which  has  proclaimed  obligatory  in- 
struction, is  the  equal  right  of  all  to  give  that  instruction,  or  the  prohibition 
of  every  monopoly  which  would  put  that  instruction  into  the  hands  either 
of  privileged  individuals,  or  of  corporations,  or  even  of  the  State,  to  the 
exclusion  of  every  other  teaching  body." 

"Under  the  old  regime,  the  education  of  the  masses  was  committed  to 
the  hands  of  the  Church;  the  colleges,  directed  by  a  body  of  men  who  were 
all  ecclesiastics,  gave  ;a  vain  pretence  of  an  education,  where  the  memory 
alone  was  exercised,  and  where  the  reason  was  insulted  in  the  forms  of 
reasoning.'  " 

"  The  purpose  of  the  men  of  the  Revolution  was,  then,  above  all  else,  to 
emancipate  science,  and  to  guarantee  the  right  of  free  inquiry;  and  while 
rescuing  instruction  from  the  tyranny  of  the  Church,  to  assure  to  citizens 
in  general  the  opportunity  to  acquire  the  knowledge  that  is  essential  to 
man.  On  the  one  hand,  they  would  take  precautions  against  the  abuse 
of  power  by  a  government  which  had  always  shown  itself  hostile  to  free 
thought  .  .  .  ;  on  the  other,  in  opposition  to  the  old  doctrine  which  con- 
demned the  people  to  ignorance,  they  proclaimed  the  duty  of  the  State  to 
create  a  system  of  public  instruction, .common  to  all  citizens.'.' 

"  It  is  at  this  point  of  view  that  we  must  place  ourselves  in  order  to  gain 
a  correct  notion  of  the  plans  that  were  submitted  to  the  Constituent  Con- 
vention and  the  Legislative  Assembly.  What  Talleyrand  and  Condorcet 
desired  was,  first,  to  organize,  under  the  form  of  a  public  service,  a  system 
of  national  education  in  which  all  might  participate;  and  in  the  second 
place,  to  take  precautions  against  the  Church  and  the  royal  authority,  and 
so  prevent  despotic  power  from  attempting  to  prevent  the  development  of 
new  truths  and  the  teaching  of  theories  which  it  judged  contrary  to  its 
policy  and  interests.  Forvthem,  liberty  of  teaching  is  the  demand  of  phil- 
osophic liberty  against  ecclesiastical  and  secular  authority."  (P.) 


372  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

rights,  to  develop  the  corporate  life  out  of  all  the  individual 
lives  freely  developed,  and  the  will  of  the  whole  out  of  all 
personal  wills." 

417.  DISTRIBUTION  OF  STUDIES.  —  In  Mirabeau's  plan, 
public  and  national  instruction  depends,  not  on  the  executive 
power,  but  on  "•  the  magistrates  who  truly  represent  the  peo- 
ple, that  is  to  say,  who  are  elected  and  often  renewed  by  the 
people,"  —  in  other  terras,  the  officers  of  departments  or  dis- 
tricts.    Establishments  for  instruction  ought  not  to  form  a 
consolidated  body. 

Let  us  observe,  finally,  that  by  the  side  of  the  primary 
schools  Mirabeau  established  a  college  of  literature  for  each 
department,  and  at  Paris,  a  single  National  Lyce'e,  "  designed 
to  secure  to  a  select  number  of  French  youth  the  means  of 
finishing  their  education."  In  this  he  established  a  chair  of 
method,  which,  he  said,  ought  to  be  the  basis  of  instruction. 

In  conclusion,  the  work  of  Mirabeau  is  but  a  very  imper- 
fect sketch,  and  a  sort  of  graduated  transition  between  the 
old  and  the  new  regime. 

We  do  not  yet  find  in  it  the  grand  ideas  which  are  to 
impassion  men,  and  it  is  the  Rapport  of  Talleyrand  which 
constitutes  the  real  introduction  to  the  educational  work  of 
the  Revolution. 

418.  THE   CONSTITUENT  ASSEMBLY   AND    TALLEYRAND.— 
The  constitution  of  Sept.  4,  1791,  announced  the  following 
provision  :  — 

"There  shall  be  created  and  organized  a  system  of  public 
instruction,  common  to  all  citizens,  and  gratuitous  with  re- 
spect to  those  branches  of  instruction  which  are  indispensable 
for  all  men." 

It  was  to  put  in  force  the  decree  of  the  Constitution  that 
Talleyrand  drew  up  his  Rapport  and  presented  it  to  the 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  373 

Assembly  at  the  sessions  of  September  10  and  11.  The 
entire  bill  contained  not  less  than  208  articles.  Having 
reached  the  term  of  its  troubled  existence,  the  Assembly  did 
not  find  the  time  to  discuss  it,  and,  while  regretting  "  not 
having  established  the  bases  of  the  regeneration  of  educa- 
tion," it  referred  the  examination  of  Talleyrand's  work  to 
the  Legislative  Assembly. 

The  Legislative  Assembly  showed  but  little  anxiety  to 
accept  the  legacy  of  its  predecessor.  Another  report,  that 
of  Condorcet,  was  prepared,  so  that  the  bill  of  Talleyrand 
never  had  the  honor  of  a  parliamentary  discussion. 

419.  TALLEYRAND    (1758-1838).  —  The    ex-bishop    of 
Autun,  having  become  a  revolutionist  of  1789,  before  being 
the  chamberlain  of  Napoleon  I.  and  the  minister  of  Louis 
XVIII.,  scarcely  deserves   by  his   character  the  esteem  of 
history ;   he  too  often  gave  a  striking  example  of  political 
versatility.     But  at  least,  by  his  supple  and  acute    intelli- 
gence, and  by  the  abundance  of  his  ideas,  he  has  always 
risen  to  the  height  of  the  various  tasks  that  he  has  under- 
taken, and  his  Report  is  a  remarkable  work. 

420.  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES. — As  Montesquieu  has   said, 
"  the  laws  of  education  ought  to  be  relative  to  the  principles 
of   government."     It  is    by  this   truth   that   Talleyrand  is 
inspired  in  the  long  considerations  that  serve  as  a  preamble 
to  his  bill. 

AVhat  was  to  be  done  in  the  presence  of  a  constitution 
which,  limiting  the  powers  of  the  king,  called  the  entire  peo- 
ple to  participate  in  political  life?  That  constitution  would 
have  remained  sterile,  would  have  been  but  a  dead  letter,  if 
a  suitable  education  had  not  come  to  vivify  it  by  causing  it 
to  pass,  so  to  speak,  into  the  blood  of  the  nation.  In  what 
did  the  new  regime  consist?  You  have  separated,  said 


374  THE   H1STOKY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

Talleyrand  to  the  members,  you  have  separated  the  will  of 
the  whole,  or  the  power  of  making  the  laws,  from  the  execu- 
tive power,  which  you  have  reserved  to  the  king.  But  that 
general  will  must  be  upright,  and,  in  order  to  be  upright,  it 
must  be  enlightened  and  instructed.  After  having  given 
power  to  the  people,  you  ought  to  teach  them  wisdom.  Of 
what  use  would  it  be  to  enfranchise  brutal  and  unconscious 
forces,  to  turn  them  over  to  their  own  keeping?  Instruction 
is  the  necessary  counterpoise  of  liberty.  The  law,  which  is 
henceforth  the  work  of  the  people,  ought  not  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  the  tumultuous  opinions  of  an  ignorant  multitude. 

421.  EDUCATION  AS  RELATED  TO  LIBERTY  AND  EQUALITY. 
—  Talleyrand  is  pleased  with  his  thought,  and,  considering 
in  turn  the  two  fundamental  ideas  of  the   Revolution,  the 
idea  of  equality  and  the  idea  of  liberty,  he  shows,  not  with- 
out some  length  of  analysis,  that  instruction  is  necessary,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  create  free  individuals,  by  giving  to  them  a 
conscience  and  a  reason,   and  on  the  other,  to  draw  men 
together  by  diminishing  the  inequality  of  intelligences. 

422.  RULES   FOR   PUBLIC    INSTRUCTION.  —  Instruction    is 
due  to  all.     There  must  be  schools  in  the  villages  as  in  the 
cities.     Instruction  ought  to  be  given  by  all ;  there  ought  to 
be  no  privilege  in  instruction.     Finally,  instruction  ought  to 
extend  to  all  subjects  ;  everything  shall  be  taught  which  can 
be  taught :  — 

"In  a  well  organized  society,  though  no  one  can  attain  to 
universal  knowledge,  it  should  nevertheless  be  possible  to 
learn  everything." 

423.  POLITICAL   EDUCATION.  —  At    tlie    basis   of    every 
educational  system  there  is  always  a  dominant  and  essential 
thought.     In  the  Middle  Age  —  and  the  Middle  Age  is  con- 
tinued in  the  schools  of  Ihe  Jesuits  —  it  is  the  idea  of  bulva- 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  375 

tion,  it  is  the  preparation  of  the  soul  for  the  future  life.  In 
the  seventeenth  century  it  is  the  conception  of  a  perfect 
justness  of  spirit  joined  to  uprightness  of  heart ;  such 
was  the  ideal  of  the  solitaries  of  Port  Royal.  In  1792  poli- 
tics became  the  almost  exclusive  preoccupation  of  the 
educators  of  youth.  Everything  else  —  religion,  accuracy 
of  judgment,  nobility  of  heart  —  is  relegated  to  the  second 
place :  man  is  nothing  more  than  a  political  animal,  brought 
into  the  world  to  know,  to  love,  and  to  obey  the  constitution. 
The  Declaration  of  tJie  Rights  of  Man  became,  in  the  sys- 
tem of  Talleyrand,  the  catechism  of  childhood.  It  is  neces- 
sary that  the  future  citizen  learn  to  know,  to  love,  to  obey, 
and  finally  to  perfect  the  constitution.  We  cannot  help 
thinking  that  Talleyrand  himself  showed  a  marvellous  apti- 
tude for  loving  and  obeying  the  constitution.  Unfortunately 
this  has  not  always  been  the  case  ! 

424.  UNIVERSAL  MORALITY. — One  of  the  most  beautiful 
pages  of  Talleyrand's  work  is  certainly  that  in  which  he 
recommends  the  teaching  of  universal  morality,  and  claims 
the  autonomy  of  natural  laws,  distinct  from  all  positive 
religion. 

"  AVe  must  learn  to  infuse  ourselves  with  morality,  which 
is  the  first  need  of  all  constitutions.  .  .  .  Morality  must  be 
taught  as  a  real  science,  whose  principles  will  be  demon- 
strated to  the  reason  of  all  men,  and  to  that  of  all  ages.  It 
is  only  in  this  way  that  it  will  resist  all  trials.  It  has  long 
been  a  matter  of  lamentation  to  see  men  of  all  nations  and 
of  all  religions  make  it  depend  exclusively  on  that  multitude 
of  opinions  which  divide  them.  From  this  have  resulted 
great  evils ;  for  abandoning  morality  to  uncertainty,  and 
often  to  absurdity,  it  has  necessarily  been  compromised  ;  it 
has  been  made  versatile  and  unsettled.  It  is  time  to  estab- 
lish it  upon  its  own  bases,  and  to  show  men  that  if  baneful 


376  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

divisions  separate  them,  they  at  least  have  in  morality  a 
common  meeting  place  where  they  all  ought  to  take  refuge 
and  unite  for  protection.  It  is  necessary,  then,  to  detach  it 
in  some  sort  from  everything  else,  in  order  to  reunite  it  at 
once  to  that  which  merits  our  approval  and  our  homage. 
.  .  .  This  change  is  simple  and  injures  nothing ;  above  all, 
it  is  possible.  How  is  it  possible  not  to  see,  in  fact,  that 
abstraction  being  made  of  every  system  and  of  every  opinion, 
and  by  considering  in  men  only  their  relations  with  other 
men,  they  can  be  taught  what  is  good  and  just,  made  to  love 
it,  and  made  to  find  happiness  in  virtuous  actions  and 
wretchedness  in  those  which  are  not  so?" 

425.  FOUR  GRADES  OF  INSTRUCTION.  —  The  organization 
of  instruction,  in   Talleyrand's  bill,  was  "  to  be  combined 
with  that  of  the  government,"  and  to  be  modeled  after  the 
division  of  administrative  functions.      The  Rapport  estab- 
lished four  grades  of  instruction.     There  was  a  school  for 
each  canton,  corresponding  to  each  primary  assembly.     Then 
came  intermediate  or  secondary  instruction,  intended,  if  not 
for  all,  at  least  for  the  greater  number,  and  given  in   the 
principal  town  of  the  district,  or  arrondissement.   In  the  third 
place,  special  schools,  scattered  over   the   territory  of   the 
kingdom,  in  the  principal  towns  of  the  departments,  prepare 
young  men  for  the  different  professions.     Finally,  the  select 
intelligences  find  at  Paris,  in  the  National  Institute,  all  that 
constitutes  the  higher  instruction. 

The  great  novelty  of  this  sj-stem  was  the  creation  of  can- 
tonal schools,  open  to  peasants  and  to  workmen,  to  those 
whom,  up  to  this  time,  improvidence  or  the  purpose  of  the 
great  sent  off  to  their  plows  or  to  their  planes. 

426.  GRATUITY  OP  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.  —  Talleyrand  did 
not  desire  compulsory  education  any  more  than  Mirabeau ; 


THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION.  377 

but,  in  accordance  with  the  constitution  of  1791,  he  demands 
the  gratuity  of  primary  instruction.  Society  is  under  obli- 
gations to  give  elementary  instruction,  but  not  intermediate 
and  secondary  instruction,  and  still  less,  special  and  higher 
instruction.  Gratuitous  for  the  lowest  grade,  and  in  case 
of  that  elementary  knowledge  which  constitutes  for  every 
civilized  man  a  real  moral  necessity,  instruction  ought  not 
to  be  free  to  young  men  who  aspire  to  a  liberal  profession, 
because  they  have  leisure,  and  who  have  leisure  because  they 
have  wealth.  However,  Talleyrand  admits  exceptions  in  the 
case  of  talent.  By  the  creation  of  national  scholarships, 
the  doors  of  all  the  schools  will  be  opened  to  select  intelli- 
gences whom  the  lowness  of  their  condition  would  condemn 
to  remain  obscure  and  unappreciated,  did  not  society  lend  to 
them  a  helping  hand. 

427.  PROGRAMME   OP  PRIMARY    INSTRUCTION.  —  Primary 
instruction  should  comprise  the  principles  of   the    national 
language,  the  elementary  rules  of  calculation  and  mensura- 
tion ;  the  elements  of  religion,  the  principles  of  morals,  the 
principles  of  the  constitution  ;    finally,  the  development  of 
the  physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  powers. 

428.  MEANS  OF  INSTRUCTION.  —  We  shall  not  insist  on  the 
details  of  the  organization   of   the  different   parts   of   that 
which  Talleyrand  himself  called   his  "  immense   machine." 
Let  us  notice  only  the  last  part  of  his  work,  where  he  dis- 
cusses a  certain   number   of   general   questions   under  this 
arbitrary  and  unjustifiable  title  :   Des  moyens   d' instruction. 
The  professors,  carefully  chosen,  shall  be   elected   by  the 
king.      Talleyrand  does  not  determine  that   they  shall   be 
irremovable,  but  he  requires  that   their   situation    shall   be 
surrounded  by  all  possible  guarantees.     Prizes,  and  rewards 
of  every  kind,  shall  encourage  the  teachers  of  youth  to  re- 


378  THE   HISTOEY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

double  their  zeal  and  to  find  new  methods.  Talleyrand 
counts  on  dramatic  representations  and  on  national  holidays 
to  hasten  the  progress  of  instruction.  Finally,  let  it  be 
added  that  he  entrusts  the  supreme  direction  of  public  in- 
struction to  six  commissioners,  chosen  by  the  king  and 
obliged  to  make  an  annual  report. 

429.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN.  —  Talleyrand,  in  his 
proposal,  has  not  wholly  forgotten  women,  and  what  he  has 
said  of  them  is  just  and  sensible.  He  discusses  the  question 
of  their  political  rights,  and,  in  accord  with  tradition  and 
good  sense,  he  concludes  that  the  happiness  of  women,  their 
own  interests,  their  nature  and  their  proper  destination, 
ought  to  forbid  them  from  entering  the  political  arena. 
What  is  particularly  fit  for  them  is  a  domestic  education, 
which,  received  in  the  family,  prepares  them  for  living  there. 
Like  Mirabeau,  he  wishes  woman  to  remain  a  woman.  Her 
function,  said  the  great  orator,  is  to  perpetuate  the  species, 
to  watch  with  solicitude  over  the  perilous  periods  of  early 
youth,  and  "  to  enchain  to  her  feet  all  the  energies  of  the 
husband  by  the  irresistible  power  of  her  weakness."  With- 
out being  as  gallant  in  his  expressions,  Talleyrand's  thought 
is  the  same.  He  thought  it  necessary,  however,  in  order  to 
respond  to  certain  proprieties,  that  the  State  should  estab- 
lish institutions  of  public  education  destined  to  replace  the 
convents. 

This  desire  sets  right  whatever  was  unreasonable  in  this 
passage  of  his  proposed  law  :  — 

"  Girls  shall  not  be  admitted  to  the  primary  schools  after 
the  age  of  eight.  After  that  age  the  National  Assembly 
advises  parents  to  entrust  the  education  of  their  daughter! 
onh'  to  themselves,  and  reminds  them  that  this  is  their  first 
duty." 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  379 

430.  THE  LEGISLATIVE  ASSEMBLY  AND   CONDOUCET. — Of 
all  llie  educational  undertakings  of  the  Revolution,  the  most 
remarkable  is  that  of  Condorcet.     His  Rapport  presented  to 
the   Legislative  Assembly,  in  behalf  of  the  committee  on 
public  instruction,  April  20  and  21,  1792,  reprinted  in  1793 
by  order  of  the  Convention,  did  not  directly  have  the  honor 
of  a  public  discussion  ;  but  it  contained  principles  and  solu- 
tions which  are  found  in  the  deliberations   and   legislative 
acts  of  his  successors.     It  remained,  during  the  whole  dura- 
tion of  the  Convention,  the  widely  accessible  source  whence 
the  legislators  of  that  time,  like  Romme,  Bouquier,  and  Lak- 
anal,  drew  their  inspiration. 

431.  CONDORCET  (1743-1794).  —  Condorcet  was  admira- 
bly qualified  for  the  task  which  the  Legislative   Assembly 
imposed  on  him,  in  charging  him  with  the  organization  of 
public  instruction.     During  the  first  years  of  the  Revolution 
he  had  employed  his  leisure  (he  was  not  a  member  of  the 
Constituent  Assembly)  in  writing  five  M6moires  on  instruc- 
tion, which  appeared  in  a  periodical  called  the  BibliotMque 
de  Vhomme  public.      The  Rapport  which  he  submitted  to  the 
Assembly  was  a  sort  of  resum6  of  his  long  reflections.    Con- 
dorcet brought  to  this  work,  not  the  indiscreet  imagination 
of  an  improvised  educator,  but  the  authority  of  a  competent 
thinker,  who,  if  he  had  no  personal  experience  in  teaching, 
had  at  least  reflected  much  on  these  topics  and  was   con- 
scious of  all  their  difficulties.     Besides,  he  devoted  himself 
to  his  work  with  the  ardor  of  an  enthusiastic  nature,  and 
with  the   serious  convictions   of   a   mind   that   had   carried 
farther  than  any  one  else  the  religion  of  progress  and  zeal 
for  the  public  good. 

432.  GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS  UPON  INSTRUCTION.  —  All 
the  Revolutionists  have  sung  the  praises  of  instruction,  of 


380  THE    HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

which  they  were  the  passionate  admirers.  Condorcet  is  its 
reflective  partisan.  He  did  not  love  it  more  than  the  others, 
but  he  comprehended  it  better,  and  better  stated  why  it 
should  be  loved.  He  first  takes  up  the  ideas  of  Talleyrand, 
and  shows  that  without  instruction,  liberty  and  equality 
would  be  chimeras  :  — 

"  A  free  constitution  which  should  not  be  correspondent 
to  the  universal  instruction  of  citizens,  would  come  to  destruc- 
tion after  a  few  conflicts,  and  would  degenerate  into  one  of 
those  forms  of  government  which  cannot  preserve  the  peace 
among  an  ignorant  and  corrupt  people." 

Anarchy  or  despotism,  such  is  the  future  of  peoples  who 
have  become  free  before  having  been  enlightened. 

As  to  equality,  without  falling  into  the  chimeras  of  an  in- 
struction which  should  be  the  s;une  for  all,  and  which  should 
reduce  all  men  to  the  same  level,  Condorcet  desires  to  realize 
it  so  far  as  it  is  possible.  He  desires  that  the  poorest  and 
the  humblest  shall  be  sufficiently  instructed  to  belong  to  him- 
self, and  not  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  first  charlatan  who 
comes  along,  and  also  to  be  able  to  fulfill  his  civil  duties,  to 
be  an  elector,  a  juror,  etc. 

433.  INSTRUCTION  AND  MORALITY.  —  The  instrument  of 
liberty  and  equality,  instruction,  in  the  opinion  of  Coudorcet, 
is,  in  addition,  the  real  source  of  public  morality  and  of 
human  progress.  If  it  were  not  correspondent  to  the 
advances  in  knowledge,  a  free  and  impartial  constitution 
would  be  hostile  rather  than  favorable  to  good  morals. 

"  Instruction  alone  can  give  the  assurance  that  the  princi- 
ple of  justice  which  the  equality  of  rights  ordains,  shall  not  be 
in  contradiction  with  this  other  principle,  which  prescribes 
that  only  those  rights  shall  be  accorded  to  men  which  they 
can  exercise  without  danger  to  society." 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  381 

But  it  is  moral  reasons  still  more  than  political  motives 
that  make  instruction  the  condition  of  virtue.  Condorcet 
has  shrewdly  seen  that  the  vices  of  the  people  come  chiefly 
from  their  intellectual  impotency. 

"•  These  vices  come,"  he  says,  "  from  the  need  of  escaping 
from  ennui  in  moments  of  leisure,  and  in  escaping  from  it 
through  sensations  and  not  through  ideas." 

These  are  notable  words  which  should  never  be  lost  sight 
of  by  the  teachers  and  moralists  of  the  people. 

To  cause  gross  natures  to  pass  from  the  life  of  the  senses 
to  the  intellectual  life  ;  to  make  study  agreeable  to  the  end 
that  the  higher  pleasures  of  the  spirit  may  struggle  success- 
fully against  the  appetites  for  material  pleasures  ;  to  put 
the  book  in  the  place  of  the  wine  bottle  ;  to  substitute  the 
library  for  the  saloon  ;  in  a  word,  to  replace  sensation  by  idea, 
—  such  is  the  fundamental  problem  of  popular  education. 

434.  INSTRUCTION  AND  PROGRESS.  —  Condorcet  was  a 
fanatic  on  the  subject  of  progress.  Up  to  the  last  moment 
of  his  life  he  dreamed  of  progress,  its  conditions,  and  its 
laws.  Now  the  most  potent  means  of  hastening  progress  is 
to  instruct  men  ;  and  here  is  the  final  reason  why  instruction 
is  so  dear  to  him. 

These  are  grand  words  :  — 

"If  the  indefinite  improvement  of  our  species  is,  as  I  be- 
lieve, a  general  law  of  nature,  man  ought  no  longer  to  regard 
himself  as  a  being  limited  to  a  transitory  and  isolated  exis- 
tence, destined  to  vanish  after  an  alternative  of  happiness  or 
of  misery  for  himself,  and  of  good  and  evil  for  those  whom 
chance  has  placed  near  him  ;  but  he  becomes  an  active  part 
of  the  grand  whole,  and  a  fellow-laborer  in  a  work  that  is 
eternal.  In  an  existence  of  a  moment,  and  upon  a  point  in 
space,  he  can,  by  his  works,  compass  all  places,  relate  him- 


382  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

self  to  all  the  centuries,  and  continue  to  act  long  centuries 
after  his  memory  has  disappeared  from  the  earth."  And 
further  on  :  "  For  a  long  time  I  have  considered  these  views 
as  dreams,  which  were  to  be  realized  only  in  an  indefinite 
future,  and  for  a  world  where  I  should  not  exist.  A  happy 
event  has  suddenly  opened  an  immense  career  to  the  hopes 
of  the  human  race  ;  a  single  instant  has  put  a  century  of  dis- 
tance between  the  man  of  to-day  and  him  of  to-morrow." 

435.  THE  LIBERALITY  OF  CONDORCET.  —  "Wrongly  credited 
with  a  despotic  and  absolute  habit  of  mind,  Condorcet  is,  on 
the  contrary,  full  of  scruples  and  penetrated  with  respect  as 
regards  the  liberty  of  individual  opinions.     In  fact,  he  care- 
fully distinguishes  instruction  from  education.     Instruction 
has  to  do  with  positive  and  certain  knowledge,  the  truths  of 
fact  and  of  calculation ;  education,  with  political  and  religious 
beliefs.     Now,  if  the  State  is  the  natural  dispenser  of  instruc- 
tion, it  ought,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  matter  of  education,  to 
forbear,  and  to  declare  itself  incompetent.     In  other  words, 
the  State  ought  not  to  abuse  its  power  by  imposing  by  force 
on  its  citizens  such  or  such  a  religious  Credo,  such  or  such 
a  political  dogma. 

"Public  authority  cannot  establish  a  body  of  doctrine 
which  is  to  be  exclusively  taught.  No  public  power  ought 
to  have  the  authority,  or  even  the  permission,  to  prevent  the 
development  of  new  truths,  or  the  teaching  of  theories  con- 
trary to  its  particular  policy  or  to  its  momentary  interests." 

436.  FIVE  GRADES  OF  INSTRUCTION.  —  Condorcet  distin- 
guishes five  grades  of  instruction  :  1.  Primary  schools  proper  ; 
2.  Secondary  schools,  that  is,  such  as  we  now  call  higher 
primary  schools ;  3.  Institutes,  or  colleges  of  secondary  in- 
struction ;  4.  Lycees,  or  institutions  of  higher  instruction  ; 
5.  The  National  Society  of  Sciences  and  Arts,  which  corre- 
sponds to  our  Institute. 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  383 

Two  things  are  especially  to  be  noted :  first,  Condorcet 
establishes  for  the  first  time  higher  primary  schools,  and  de- 
mands one  for  each  district,  and  in  addition  one  for  each  town 
of  four  thousand  inhabitants  ;  then,  for  primary  schools  proper, 
he  takes  the  population  as  a  basis  for  their  establishment,  and 
requires  one  for  each  four  hundred  inhabitants.1 

437.  PURPOSE   AND   PLAN   OF   PRIMARY   INSTRUCTION.  — 
Condorcet  has  admirably  defined  the  purpose  of  primary  in- 
struction :  — 

~rln  the  primary  schools  there  is  taught  that  which  is 
necessary  for  each  individual  in  order  to  direct  his  own  con- 
duct and  to  enjoy  the  plenitude  of  his  own  rights.**^* 

The  programme  comprised/reading,  writing,  some  notions 
on  grammar,  the    rules   of   arithmetic)  siaapie-  -methods-  of  ^ 
measuring  a  field  and  a  building  with  exactness;  a  simple    ''  ••" 
description  of  the  productions  of  the  country,  of  the  processes 
in   agriculture  and  the  arts ;  the  development  of  the  first 
moral  ideas  and  the  rules  for  conduct  derived  from  them ; 
finally,  such  of  the  principles  of  social  order  as  can  be  put 
within  the  comprehension  of  children.  CUrvu^"3 

438.  THE  IDEA  OF  COURSES  FOR  ADULTS.  —  Condorcet 
was  strongly  impressed  with  the  necessity  of  continuing  the 
instruction  of  the  workman  and  of  the  peasant  after  with- 
drawal from  school :  — 

1  Public  instruction  as  now  organized  in  France  is  of  three  grades,  as 
follows: —  * 

"  Primary  instruction,  which  gives  the  elements  of  knowledge,  reading, 
writing,  and  arithmetic.  Secondary  instruction,  embracing  the  study  of 
the  ancient  languages,  of  rhetoric,  and  the  first  elements  of  the  mathemati- 
cal and  physical  sciences,  and  of  philosophy.  This  is  given  in  the  lycees 
and  colleges,  as  well  as  in  the  smaller  seminaries.  Superior  instruction, 
designed  to  teach  in  all  their  completeness  letters,  the  languages,  the  sci- 
ence-, and  philosophy.  This  is  given  in  the  Faculties,  in  the  College  of 
France,  and  in  the  larger  seminaries."  —  LITTRE.  (P.) 


384  THE    HISTOBY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

"We  have  observed  that  instruction  ought  not  to  abandon 
individuals  the  moment  they  leave  the  scbools  ;  that  it  ought 
to  embrace  all  ages ;  that  there  is  no  period  of  life  when  it  is 
not  useful  and  possible  to  learu,  and  that  this  supplementary 
instruction  is  so  much  the  more  necessary  as  that  of  infancy 
has  been  contracted  to  the  narrowest  limits.  Here  is  one 
of  the  principal  causes  of  the  ignorance  in  which  the  poor 
classes  of  society  are  to-day  plunged  ;  they  lacked  not  nearly 
so  much  the  possibility  of  receiving  an  elementary  instruction 
as  that  of  preserving  its  advantages." 

Consequently,  Condorcet  proposed,  if  not  courses  of  in- 
struction for  adults,  at  least  something  very  like  them,  — 
weekly  lectures,  given  each  Sunda}'  by  the  village  teachers, 
a  kind  of  lay  sermons. 

"Each  Sunday  the  teacher  shall  give  a  public  lecture 
which  citizens  of  all  ages  will  attend.  In  this  arrangement 
we  have  seen  a  means  of  giving  to  young  people  those  neces- 
sary parts  of  knowledge,  which,  however,  did  not  form  a  part 
of  their  primary  education." 

439.  PROFESSIONAL  AND  TECHNICAL  EDUCATION.  —  But 
Condorcet  does  not  think  his  duty  to  the  people  done  when 
he  has  given  them  intellectual  emancipation.  He  is  very 
anxious  to  give  in  addition  to  the  sons  of  peasants  or  work- 
men the  means  of  struggling  against  misery,  by  diffusing 
more  and  more  among  the  masses  of  the  people  a  technical 
knowledge  of  the  arts  and  trades.  He  deserves  to  be 
counted  among  the  adepts  in  professional  instruction  and  in 
industrial  education.  He  asks  that  there  be  placed  in  the 
schools  "  models  of  machines  or  of  trades"  ;  and  in  all  grades 
of  instruction,  he  recommends  with  a  special  solicitude  the 
teaching  of  the  practical  arts. 

We  fancy  we  are  doing  something  new  to-day  when  we 
establish  school  museums.  "Each  school,"  says  Condorcet, 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  385 

"  shall  have  a  small  library,  and  a  small  cabinet  in  which 
shall  be  placed  some  meteorological  instruments  or  some 
specimens  of  natural  history." 

440.  THE   EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN.  —  Condorcet   may  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  ardent  apostles  of  the  education 
of  women.     He  wishes  education  to  be  common  and  equal. 
He  is  evidently  wrong  when  he  dreams  of  a  perfect  identity 
of  instruction  for  the  two  sexes,  when  he  forgets  the  partic- 
ular destination  of  women,  and  the  special  character  of  their 
education.     But  we  have  found  so  many  educators  disposed 
to  depreciate  the  abilities  of  woman,  that  we  are  happy  to 
find   at   last    one    voice    that    exalts    them,   even    beyond 
measure. 

Let  us  recall,  however,  the  excellent  reasons  which  he 
gives  in  support  of  his  thesis  on  the  equality  of  education. 
It  is  necessary  that  women  should  be  instructed :  1.  in  order 
that  they  may  be  able  to  bring  up  their  children,  of  whom 
they  are  the  natural  instructors  ;  2.  in  order  that  they  ma}' 
be  the  worth}'  companions,  the  equals  of  their  husbands,  that 
they  may  feel  an  interest  in  their  pursuits,  share  in  their 
preoccupations,  and,  finally,  participate  in  their  life,  such 
being  the  condition  of  conjugal  happiness ;  3.  in  order, 
further,  by  an  analogous  reason,  that  they  may  not  quench, 
by  their  ignorance,  that  inspiration  of  heart  and  mind  which 
previous  studies  have  developed  in  their  husbands,  but  that 
they  may  nourish  this  flame  by  conversation  and  reading  in 
common  ;  4.  finally,  because  this  is  just,  —  because  the  two 
sexes  have  an  equal  right  to  instruction.  4 

441.  RESERVATIONS   TO   BE   MADE.  —  All   is   not   equally 
worthy  of  commendation  in  the  work  of  Condorcet.     Some 
faults  and  some   omissions   mar  this  fine  piece  of  political 
pedagogy.     The  faults  are,  first,  the  exaggerated  idea  of  lib- 


386  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

erty  and  of  equality.  From  Condorcet's  ardors  for  liberty  there 
issues,  in  his  plan  for  education,  a  grave  error,  —  the  idea  of 
making  of  the  teaching  body  a  sort  of  State  within  the  State, 
an  independent  authority,  a  fourth  power,  released  from  all 
exterior  authority,  governing  itself  and  administering  its 
own  affairs,  the  State  intervening  only  as  treasurer  to  pay  for 
the  services  which  it  neither  1'egulates  nor  supervises.  The 
liberal  Daunou,  while  explaining  the  system  of  our  author, 
has  criticised  it  on  this  point.1  "  Condorcet,"  he  said,  "  the 
enemy  of  corporations,  has  sanctioned  one  in  his  scheme  of 
national  instruction  ;  he  established,  as  it  were,  an  academic 
church.  This  is  because  Condorcet,  the  enemy  of  kings, 
would  add  in  the  balance  of  public  powers  one  counter- 
balance more  to  that  royal  power  whose  monstrous  existence, 
in  a  free  constitution,  is  sufficiently  attested  by  the  alarms 
and  fears  of  all  the  friends  of  liberty." 

The  passion  for  equality  led  Condorcet  into  another  chimera, 
—  that  of  the  absolute  gratuity  of  instruction  of  all  grades. 

Finally,  in  his  dreams  of  infinite  perfectibility,  Condorcet 
allows  himself  to  be  carried  so  far  away  as  to  imagine  for 
man,  and  to  expect  from  instruction,  results  that  are  utterly 
unattainable.  Instruction,  according  to  him,  ought  to  be  so 
complete  "  as  to  cause  the  disappearance  of  every  inequality 
which  induces  dependence." 

442.  PREJUDICES  OF  THE  MATHEMATICIAN.  —  From  another 
point  of  view,  Condorcet  was  led  astray  by  his  predilection 
for  the  sciences.  He  so  far  forgot  that  he  was  a  member  of 
the  French  Academy  as  to  obey  only  his  tendencies,  a  little 
too  exclusive,  as  a  mathematician  and  a  member  of  the 
Academ\-  of  Sciences.  By  a  reaction,  natural  enough, 

against  those  long  centuries  in  which  an  abuse  was  made  of 

f_ 

1  See  the  Rapport  of  Daunou  presented  to  the  National  Convention,  27 
Vende'miaire,  year  IV. 


THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION.  387 

literary  culture,  Condorcet  is  too  prompt  to  underrate  the 
influence  of  letters  in  education,  and  to  invest  the  sciences 
with  the  place  of  honor.  The  reasons  which  he  invokes  to 
justify  his  preference  are  not  all  conclusive. 

443.  OMISSIONS.  —  The  idea  of  obligatory  instruction  is 
still  wanting  in  the  scheme  we  are  examining.  We  shall  be 
surprised,  perhaps,  that  Condorcet,  who  has  so  clearly  pro- 
claimed the  necessity  of  universal  instruction,  did  not  think 
to  impose  obligatory  attendance,  which  is  the  only  means  of 
establishing  it.  This  is  because  the  early  revolutionists,  in 
the  ardor  of  their  enthusiasm,  did  not  suspect  the  opposition 
to  the  accomplishment  of  their  plans  that  was  to  come  from 
the  indifference  of  the  greater  number,  and  from  the  preju- 
dices of  those  who,  as  Condorcet  has  eloquently  said, 
"  thought  they  were  obeying  God  while  betraying  their  coun- 
try." It  seemed  to  them  that  when  centres  of  light  had 
been  made  to  glow  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  country, 
citizens  would  hasten  after  them,  impelled  by  a  natural 
appetite,  spontaneously  thirsting  for  enlightenment.  The}" 
were  deceived.  These  hopes,  a  little  artless,  were  destined 
to  be  disproved  by  facts  ;  and  it  was  to  triumph  over  the 
neglect  of  some,  and  the  resistance  of  others,  that  the  Con- 
vention, supplying  one  of  the  rare  defects  in  Condorcet's 
plan,  decreed,  on  several  occasions,  instruction  "  imperative 
and  forced,"  as  was  then  said. 

On  still  another  point,  Condorcet  remained  inferior  to  his 
successors  ;  in  his  report  there  was  no  mention  made  of  the 
organization  of  normal  schools.  In  this  grave  and  funda- 
mental question  of  the  education  of  the  teaching  body, 
Condorcet  contented  himself  with  a  provisional  expedient, 
which  consisted  in  entrusting  to  the  professors  of  the  grade 
immediately  higher  the  care  of  preparing  teachers  for  the 
grade  lower. 


388  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

444.  FINAL  CONCLUSION.  —  But  even  with  these  reserva- 
tions, the  work  of  Condorcet  deserves  scarcely  anything  but 
praise.  We  have  commended  its  new  and  exalted  concep- 
tions. Its  beautiful  and  exact  arrangement  and  its  masterly 
style  also  deserve  praise.  Coudorcet's  periods  are  symmetri- 
cal in  their  fullness,  and  the  expression  is  precise  and  vigor- 
ous. Doubtless  there  is  some  rnonoton}'  and  some  frigidity 
in  that  style  so  concise  and  strong.  But  at  intervals  there 
are  outbursts  of  passion.  The  man  whom  his  contempora- 
ries compared  to  "an  enraged  lamb,"  or  to  a  "volcano 
covered  with  snow,"  is  painted  to  the  life  in  his  writings. 
His  Rapport  is  like  a  beautiful  and  finished  statue  of  marble, 
cold  to  the  touch,  but  upon  which  the  hand  might  feel  beat- 
ing in  places  a  vein  warm  with  life. 

[445.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  more  important 
lessons  to  be  derived  from  this  study  are  the  following :  the 
necessity  of  making  instruction  universal  and  of  having  it 
administered  by  the  State ;  the  need  of  making  instruction 
obligatory,  and,  in  certain  grades,  gratuitous  ;  the  value  of 
intellectual  culture  as  a  moral  safeguard. 

2.  The  right  of  the  State  to  self-preservation  carries  with 
it  the  right  to  ordain  the  establishment  of  schools  for  giving 
a  certain  kind  and  degree  of  instruction.     This  constitutes 
the  first  form  of  compulsion. 

3.  When  there  is  not  a  voluntary  and  general  attendance 
on  the  schools  ordained  by  the  State,  it  may  avail  itself  of 
the   supplementary    right   to   make   attendance    obligatory. 
This    constitutes    the    second   form   of   compulsion. 

4.  Gratuity  is  the  logical  sequence  to  compulsion.     If  the 
State  may  require  all  children  to  partake  of  a  certain  degree 
of  instruction,  it  must  mnke  such  instruction  free. 

5.  Should  instruction^  that  is  above  the  compulsory  grade 
be  free?     This  depends  on  the  question  whether  the  State 


THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION.  389 

needs  a  certain  amount  of  the  higher  culture,  and  whether 
this  required  amount  will  be  secured  at  the  pupils'  own  ex- 
pense. Monsieur  Compayre"  decides,  as  against  Condorcet 
(paragraph  441),  that  the  higher  grades  of  instruction 
should  not  be  gratuitous.  In  this  country  the  prevailing 
theory  is  that  the  higher  education  should  be  endowed  by 
the  State. 

6.  The  relation  of  instruction  to  morality  has  never  been 
more  justly  and  pointedly  stated  than  in  paragraph  433. 
This  is  not  only  good  sense  but  sound  philosophy.] 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  CONVENTION. — LEPELLETIER   SAINT-FARGEATJ, 
LAKANAL,   DAUNOU. 

THE  CONVENTION;  SUCCESSIVE  MEASURES;  THE  BILL  OF  LANTHENAS; 
THE  BILL  OF  ROMME  ;  THE  NATIONAL  HOLIDAYS  J  ELEMENTARY 
BOOKS;  DECREE  OF  MAY  30,  1793;  LAKANAL  (1762-1845);  DAUNOU 
(1761-1840)  ;  THE  BILL  OF  LAKANAL,  8IEYE8,  AND  DAUNOU  ;  LEPEI.LK- 
TIER  SAINT-FARGEAU  (1760-1793)  ',  HIS  SCHEME  OF  EDUCATION  (JULY 
13,  1793);  LEPELLETIER  AND  CONDORCET J  COMPULSORY  EDUCATION* 
IN  BOARDING-SCHOOLS;  THE  CHILD  BELONGS  TO  THE  REPUBLIC; 
SCHOOL  OCCUPATIONS;  ABSOLUTE  GRATUITY;  THE  RIGHTS  OF  THE 
FAMILY;  SAINT-JUST;  THE  ROMME  LAW;  THE  BOUQUIER  LAW;  THE 
LAKANAL  LAW  J  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS  ;  ELEMENTARY  BOOKS  ; 
GEOGRAPHY;  LETTERS  AND  SCIENCES;  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  NORMAL 
SCHOOLS;  THE  NORMAL  SCHOOL  OF  PARIS;  CENTRAL  SCHOOLS;  THEIR 
DEFECTS;  POSITIVE  AND  PRACTICAL  SPIRIT;  GREAT  FOUNDATIONS 
OF  THE  CONVENTION;  THE  LAW  OF  OCTOBER  27,1795;  INSUFFICIENCY 
OF  DAUNOU'S  SCHEME  ;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


446.  THE  CONVENTION. — The  Constituent  Assembly  and 
the   Legislative  Assembly  had  done  nothing  more  than  to 
prepare  reports  and  projected  decrees,  without   either  dis- 
cussing them  or  bringing  them  to  a  vote.     The  Convention 
went  so  far  as  to  vote,  but  it  did  not  have  the  time  to  exe- 
cute the  resolutions,  contradictory  and  incoherent,  which  it 
was  forced  to  adopt,  one  after  another,  by  the  fluctuation 
of  political  currents. 

447.  SUCCESSIVE    MEASURES.  —  Nothing    definite   in   the 
way  of  execution  issued  from  the  enthusiastic  passion  which 
the  Convention  exhibited  for  the  organization  of  primary 
instruction.     First  there  was  a  triumph  of  modern  ideas  in 


THE  CONVENTION.  391 

the  bill  of  Lanthenas,  the  first  article  of  which  was  adopted 
December  12,  1792  ;  aud  they  appeared  again  in  the  bill  of 
Sieyes,  Daunou,  and  Lakaual,  presented  June  26,  1793, 
and  defeated  after  an  exciting  discussion.  But  the  influence 
of  the  Girondists  was  succeeded  by  the  domination  of  the 
Montagnards1  whose  dictatorial  and  violent  spirit  is  indi- 
cated: 1.  in  the  bill  of  Lepelletier,  adopted  through  the 
support  of  Robespierre,  August  13,  1795;  2.  in  the  bill 
projected  and  presented  by  Romme  in  behalf  of  the  commis- 
sion of  public  instruction,  October  20,  1793,  and  passed  on 
the  following  day  ;  3.  and  lastly  in  the  bill  of  Bouquier, 
which,  presented  December  19,  1793,  became  the  decree  of 
December  26.  The  reaction  which  followed  resulted  in  the 
legislative  acts  by  which  the  Convention  finished  its 
educational  work.  The  bill  of  Sieyes,  Daunou,  and  Laka- 
nal  was  reconsidered,  and  November  17,  1793,  it  was  substi- 
tuted for  the  bill  of  Bouquier.  Finally,  when  the  constitution 
of  1794  was  substituted  for  the  constitution  of  1793,  a  new 
law  of  public  instruction  was  passed  on  the  report  of  Daunon, 
October  27,  1795,  and  it  is  this  law  which  presided  over 
the  organization  of  schools  under  the  Directory. 

In  this  confusion,  this  chaos  of  bills  and  counter-bills,  it  is 
difficult  to  establish  any  clew  that  is  wholly  trustworthy. 
We  shall  restrict  ourselves  to  noting  the  points  that  seem 
essential. 2 

Impatient  to  finish  its  business,  the  committee  on  public 

1  A  term  applied  to  the  most  pronounced  revolutionists  of  the  Convention 
and  of  the  National  Assembly. 

2  It  is  impossible,  within  the  limits  prescribed  by  the  character  and  plan 
of  this  work,  to  enter  into  detail  and  enumerate  all  the  decrees  and  counter- 
decrees  of  the  Convention   on  the  subject  of  public  instruction.    To  see 
clearly  into  this  chaos   and  this  confusion,  it  is  necessary  to  read  the 
excellent  article  of  Monsieur  Guillaume  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic, 
article  CONVENTION. 


392  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

instruction,  which  the  Convention  had  appointed  October  2, 
1792,  decided  to  put  aside,  for  the  present,  the  other  branches 
of  public  instruction,  and  proposed  for  immediate  action 
only  the  organization  of  primary  schools,  by  taking,  as  a 
point  of  departure,  the  bill  which  Condorcet  had  presented 
to  the  Legislative  Assembly.  The  report  of  Lanthenas  and 
a  proposed  decree  were  within  a  few  weeks  the  results  of 
these  deliberations  ;  but  in  all  its  parts  this  result  is  scarce!}' 
more  than  the  reproduction  of  Condorcet's  work,  and  presents 
nothing  original.  Let  us  note,  however,  the  idea  of  as- 
sociating the  pupil  with  his  teacher  in  the  work  of  instruc- 
tion :  — 

"Teachers  will  call  to  their  aid  the  pupils  whose  intelligence 
shall  have  made  the  most  rapid  progress  ;  and  they  will  thus 
be  able,  very  easily,  to  give  to  four  classes  of  pupils,  in  the 
same  session,  all  the  attention  needed  for  their  progress. 
At  the  same  time,  the  efforts  made  by  the  most  competent 
to  teach  what  they  know  to  their  schoolmates,  will  be  much 
more  instructive  to  themselves  than  the  lessons  they  receive 
from  their  masters." 

Further,  let  us  notice  title  III.  of  the  proposed  decree 
relative  to  the  measures  to  be  taken  in  order  to  make  obli- 
gatory the  use  of  the  French  language,  and  to  abolish  the 
patois,  or  particular  idioms.  The  minimum  salary  of  men 
teachers  was  fixed  at  six  hundred  francs.  The  appointment 
of  teachers  was  entrusted  to  the  heads  of  families,  who  were 
to  elect  one  from  a  list  prepared  by  a  "  commission  of  edu- 
cated persons"  appointed  by  the  Councils-General  of  the 
communes  and  the  Directories  of  departments. 

448.  THE  BILL  OF  LANTHENAS.  —  The  discussion  of  the  bill 
of  Lanthenas  began  on  December  12,  1792,  but  only  article 
first  was  carried,  and  the  bill  itself  did  not  become  a  law. 


THE   CONVENTION.  393 

On  December  20,  another  member  of  the  Convention, 
Roinine,  mathematician,  deputy  from  Puy-de-D6me,  read 
a  new  report  on  public  instruction. 

449.  THE    BILL   OF    ROMME. —  The    bill   of    Lanthenas 
aimed  at  only  the  first  grade  of  instruction,  but  the  report  of 
Romme  embraced  the  four  grades  of  instruction,  and  was 
but  little  more  than   a  reproduction  of  Condorcet's  work. 
But  no  legislative  measure  followed  the  reading  of  his  bill, 
and  up  to  the  30th  of  May,  1793,  there  is  scarcely  anything 
to  be  noted,  as  the  educational  work  of  the  Convention,  save 
the  bill  of  Rabaud  Saint-Eticnne  on  public  festivals,  and  the 
report  of  Arbogast  on  elementary  books. 

450.  NATIONAL   HOLIDAYS.  —  It  is   difficult   to  form   an 
idea  of  the  importance  which  the  men  of  this  period  attributed 
to  the  educational  influence  of  national  holidays.     At  vari- 
ance on  so  many  points,  they  all  agree  in  thinking  that  the 
French  people  could  be  instructed  and  regenerated  simply 
by  establishing  popular  solemnities. 

"  It  is  a  kind  of  institution,"  said  Robespierre,  "  which 
ought  to  be  considered  as  an  essential  part  of  public  educa- 
tion,—  I  mean  national  holidays." 

Daunou  also  persisted  in  considering  national  holidays  as 
the  most  certain  and  the  most  comprehensive  means  of  pub- 
lic instruction.  The  decree  passed  at  his  request  established 
seven  national  holidays :  that  of  the  foundation  of  the 
Republic,  of  young  men,  of  husbands,  of  thanksgiving,  of 
agriculture,  of  liberty,  of  old  men. 

451.  ELEMENTARY  BOOKS. — An  important  point  in  the 
pedagogy  of  the  Revolution  was  the  attention  given  to  the 
composition   of   elementary  books.      On    several   occasions 
the  Convention  put  up  at  competition  these  modost  works 
intended  to  aid  parents  or  teachers  in  their  task.    It  was  one 


394  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

of  the  happiest  thoughts  of  that  period  to  desire  that  there 
should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  parents  simple  methods  and 
well-arranged  books  which  might  teach  them  how  to  bring  up 
their  children.  The  difficulty  of  this  kind  of  composition 
was  understood,  and  so  application  was  made  to  the  most 
distinguished  writers.  Beruardin  de  Saint^Pierre  was  em- 
ployed to  edit  the  Elements  of  Morality. 

December  24,  1792,  Arbogast  had  submitted  to  the  Con- 
vention a  proposed  decree  in  which  it  was  said  :  — 

"It  is  only  the  superior  men  in  a  science,  or  in  an  art, 
those  who  have  sounded  all  its  depths,  and  have  carried  it  to 
its  farthest  limits,  who  are  capable  of  composing  such  ele- 
mentary treatises  as  are  desirable."  . 

452.  DECREE  or  MAY  30,  1793.  —  The  first  decree  of  the 
Convention  relative  to  primary  schools  was  passed  May  30, 
1793.     But  this    laconic   law  contained  nothing  very  new. 
Besides,  it  was  forgotten   in  the  storm  which  on  the  next 
day,  May  31,  swept  away  the  Girondists,  and  gave  to  the 
Montaguards  the  political  supremacy. 

453.  LAKAXAL  (1762-1845).  —  After  the  revolution  of 
Ma}-  31,  among  the  men  who,  in  the  committee  on  public  in- 
struction and  in  the  assembly  itself,  were  occupied  with  the 
educational  organization  of  France,  we  must  assign  the  first 
place  to  Lakanal  and  Daunou.     On  June  26,  1793,  three 
days  after  the  adoption  of  the    new  constitution,   Lakanal 
brought  to  the   tribune  the  bill  which  he  had  drawn  up  in 
conjunction  with  Daunou  and  Sieves. 

Lakanal  is  one  of  the  purest  and  most  remarkable  charac- 
ters of  the  French  Revolution.1  "•  Lakanal,"  said  Marat,  to 
whom  some  one  had  denounced  him.  "  works  too  much  to 

1  See  a  recent  sketch,  Lakanal,  by  Paul  Legendre  (Paris,  1882),  with  a 
Preface  by  Paul  Bert. 


THE   CONVENTION.  395 

have  the  time  to  conspire."  Industrious  and  thoughtful, 
after  having  taught  philosophy  with  the  "Doctrinaires,"  of 
whom  he  was  the  pupil,  he  became  the  first,  after  Coudorcet, 
of  the  educators  of  the  Revolution.  k'  His  appearance,"  says 
Paul  Bert,  "  has  always  particularly  attracted  me.  It  unites 
gentleness  with  force,  energy  with  serenity.  We  feel  that 
this  austere  citizen  has  never  known  any  other  passion  than 
that  of  well-doing,  and  has  neither  desired  nor  obtained  any 
other  reward  than  that  of  having  done  his  duty.  He  despises 
violence  of  language,  and  hates  that  of  acts  ;  and  so  we  do 
not  find  him,  under  the  Empire,  a  baron  like  Jean-Bon  Saint 
Andre,  a  minister  like  Fouche" ,  or  a  senator  like  a  whole  herd." 

454.  DAUNOU  (1761-1840). — At  an  early  period  in  his 
life,  Daunou  had  taught  philosophy  in  the  colleges  of  the 
Oratorians,  of  whom  he  was  a  member.  In  1789  he  pub- 
lished in  the  Journal  Encyclopfalique,  a  plan  of  national 
education  which  was  approved  by  the  Oratory,  and  which 
he  presented  to  the  Constituent  Assembly  in  1790.  In  the 
Convention  he  took  an  active  part  in  the  work  of  the  com- 
mittee on  public  instruction,  and  assisted  in  the  preparation 
of  Lakanal's  first  bill.  In  the  same  year  he  published  an 
Essay  on  Public  Instruction.  In  the  Council  of  the  Five 
Hundred  he  was  appointed  to  make  a  report  on  the  organiza- 
tion of  special  schools.  Under  the  Empire  he  accepted  the 
management  of  the  national  archives.  Under  the  Restora- 
tion he  was  appointed  professor  of  history  in  the  College  of 
France.  Finally,  after  1830,  we  find  him  once  more  in  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies,  giving  proof  of  unusual  energy  and 
vitality,  and  presenting  in  opposition  to  the  minister  of  pub- 
lic instruction,  de  Montalivet,  a  counter-bill,  the  principal 
aim  of  which  was  to  lodge  with  the  municipal  authorities  the 
administration  of  schools,  a  power  which  the  government 
wished  to  leave  in  the  hands  of  the  inspectors. 


396  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

455.  THE  BILL  OF  LAKANAL,  SIEYES,  AND  DAUXOU.  — 
These  are  the  principal  provisions  of  this  bill :  a  school  for 
each  thousand  inhabitants ;  separate  schools  for  girls  and 
boys  ;  the  election  of  teachers  entrusted  to  a  board  of  in- 
spectors composed  of  three  members,  and  located  at  the  gov- 
ernment centre  of  each  district ;  the  general  organization  of 
methods,  regulations,  and  school  regime  placed  in  the  hands 
of  a  central  commission  sitting  with  the  Corps  Legishitif, 
and  placed  under  its  authority  ;  an  education  which  embraces 
the  whole  man,  at  once  intellectual,  physical,  moral,  and  in- 
dustrial ;  the  first  lessons  in  reading  given  to  boys  as  to  girls 
by  a  woman  teacher;  arithmetic,  geometry,  physics,  and 
morals  included  in  the  programme  of  instruction  ;  visits  to 
hospitals,  prisons,  and  workshops  ;  finally,  liberty  granted  to 
private  initiative  to  found  schools. 

tl  The  law  can  put  no  veto  on  the  right  which  all  citizens 
have  to  open  private  courses  and  schools,  free  in  all  grades 
of  instruction,  and  to  direct  them  as  shall  seem  to  them 
best."  (Art.  61.) 

This  was  pushing  liberality  rather  far. 

Another  distinctive  feature  of  this  bill,  which  is  not  with- 
out value,  is  the  respect  shown  the  character  and  functions 
of  the  teacher.  On  public  occasions  the  schoolmaster  shall 
wear  a  medal  with  this  inscription  :  He  who  instructs  is  a 
second  father.  The  form  is  rather  pretentious,  but  the  sen- 
timent is  good.  Other  articles  do  not  merit  the  same  com- 
mendation, particularly  the  one  which  established  theatres  in 
each  canton,  in  which  men  and  women  would  take  part  in 
music  and  dancing. 

The  bill  of  Lakanal,  vigorously  opposed  by  a  part  of  the 
Assembly,  was  not  adopted.  Under  the  leadership  of  Robes- 
pierre, the  Convention  gave  preference  to  the  dictatorial  and 
violent  measure  of  Lepelletier  Saint-Fargeau. 


THE   CONVENTION.  397 

456.  LEPELLETIER  SAINT-FARGEAU   (1760-1793). — As- 
sassinated  in   1793,    Lepelletier  Saint-Fargeau  left  among 
his  papers  an  educational  bill  which  Robespierre  took  up, 
and  which  he  presented  to  the  Assembly  July  13,  1793,  on 
the  occasion  of  the  debate  opened  on  the  motion  of  Barrere. 
A  month  later  the  bill  was  passed  by  the  Convention,  but  be- 
fore being  carried  into  operation,  the  decree  was  revoked. 
The  Assembly  receded  from  the  accomplishment  of  a  reform 
in  which  some  good  intentions  could  not  atone  for  measures 
that,  on  the  whole,  were  mischievous  and  tyrannical. 

457.  His  SCHEME  OP  EDUCATION.  —  The  plan  of  Lepel- 
letier scarcely  deserves  the  admiration  which  Michelet  gives 
it,  who  salutes  in  this  work  the  "  revolution  of  childhood,"  and 
who  declares  that  it  is  "  admirable  in  spirit,  and  in  no  respect 
chimerical."     An  imitation  with  but  little  originality  of  the 
institutions  of  Lycurgus  and  the  reveries  of  Plato,  the  plan 
of  Lepelletier  is  scarcely  more  than  an  historical  curiosity. 

458.  LEPELLETIKR  AND  CONDORCET.  —  Lepelletier  accepted 
Condorcet's  plan  in  all  that  relates  to  secondary  schools,  insti- 
tutes, and  lycees,  that  is  to  say,  higher  primary  instruction, 
secondary  instruction,  and  superior  instruction. 

"•  I  find,"  he  said,  "  in  these  three  courses  a  plan  which 
seems  to  me  wisely  conceived." 

But  Lepelletier  follows  only  his  own  fane}*  in  the  concep- 
tion of  those  curious  boarding-schools,  little  barracks  for 
childhood,  in  which  he  confined  all  children  by  force,  wrest- 
ing them  from  their  parents,  and  placing  at  the  expense  of 
the  State  their  moral  training,  as  well  as  their  material 
support. 

459.  OBLIGATORY  ATTENDANCE  IN  BOARDING-SCHOOLS. — 
In   education,    Lepelletier    represents    the    doctrine   of   the 
Jacobins.      In  order  to  make  France  republican,  he  would 
employ  radical  and  absolute  measures. 


398  THE   HIST01.Y   Olf   PEDAGOGY. 

"  Let  us  ordain,"  he  says,  "  that  all  children,  girls  as  well 
as  boys,  girls  from  five  to  eleven,  and  boys  from  five  to 
twelve,  shall  be  educated  in  common,  at  the  expense  of  the 
State,  and  shall  receive,  for  six  or  seven  years,  the  same 
education." 

In  order  that  there  may  be  complete  equality,  their  food, 
like  their  instruction,  shall  be  the  same  ;  even  more,  their 
dress  shall  be  identical.  Does  Lepelletier  then  desire,  in  his 
craze  for  equality,  that  girls  shall  be  dressed  like  boys? 

4GO.  THE  CHILD  BELONGS  TO  THE  REPUBLIC.  —  The  idea 
of  Lepelletier  is  that  the  child  is  the  property  of  the  State, 
a  chattel  of  the  Republic.  The  State  must  make  the  child  in 
its  own  image. 

"  In  our  system,"  he  says,  "  the  entire  being  of  the  child 
belongs  to  us  ;  the  material  never  leaves  the  mould."  And 
he  adds,  '•  Whatever  is  to  compose  the  Republic  ought  to  be 
cast  in  the  republican  mould." 

Lepelletier  imposes  on  all  children,  girls  and  boys,  the 
same  studies, — reading,  writing,  numbers,  natural  morality, 
domestic  economy.  This  is  almost  the  programme  of  Con- 
dorcet.  But  he  adds  to  it  manual  labor.  All  children  shall 
be  employed  in  working  the  soil.  If  the  college  has  not  at 
its  disposal  enough  land  to  cultivate,  the  children  shall  be 
taken  out  on  the  roads,  there  to  pick  up  stones  or  to  scatter 
them.  Can  we  imagine,  without  smiling,  a  system  of  educa- 
tion, in  which  our  future  advocates  and  writers  are  to  spend 
six  years  in  transporting  material  upon  the  highways  ? 

461.  ABSOLUTE  GRATUITY. — The  colleges  in  which  Lepel- 
letier sequesters  and  quarters  all  the  children  are  to  be  abso- 
lutely free.  Three  measures  were  proposed  for  covering  the 
expense:  1.  tuition  paid  by  parents  in  easy  circumstances; 
2.  the  labor  of  the  children  ;  3.  the  balance  needed  furnished 


THE  CONVENTION.  399 

by  the  State.     But  is  there  not  just  a  little  of  the  chimerical 
in  counting  much  on  the  work  of  children  of  that  age  ? 

462.  THE   RIGHTS  OF   THE    FAMILY.  —  Lepelletier    takes 
lint  little  account  of  the  rights  of  the   family.     However, 
notice  must  be  taken  of  that  idea  which  Robespierre  thought 
t;  sublime,"-  — the  creation,  at  each  college,  of  a  council  of 
heads  of  families,  entrusted  with  the  oversight  of  teachers 
and  their  children. 

463.  SAINT-JUST.  —  Saint-Just,  in  his  Institutions  r6pub- 
licaines,  maintains  opinions  analogous  to  those  of  Lepelletier. 
He  admits  that  the  child  belongs  to  his  mother  till  the  age  of 
live  ;  but  from  the  age  of  five  till  death  he  belongs  to  the 
Republic.     Till  the  age  of  sixteen  boys  are  fed  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  State.     It  is  true  that  their  food  is  not  expen- 
sive.    It  is  composed  of  grapes,  fruit,  vegetables,  milk-diet, 
bread,  and  water.     Their  dress  is  of  cotton  in  all  seasons. 
However,  Saint-Just  did  not  subject  girls  to  the  same  regime. 
More  liberal  on  this  point  than  Lepelletier,  he  would  have 
them  brought  up  at  home. 

464.  THE  ROMME  LAW  (Oct.  30,   1793).  —  Romme   was 
one  of  the  most  active  members  of  the  committee  on  public 
instruction.     He  was  the  principal  author  of  the  bill  which 
the  Convention  passed  in  October,  1793,  the  principal  articles 
of  which  were  conceived  as  follows  :  — 

"  Art.  1.  There  are  primary  schools  distributed  through- 
out the  Republic  in  proportion  to  the  population. 

"  Art.  2.  In  these  schools  children  receive  their  earliest 
physical,  moral,  and  intellectual  education,  the  best  adapted 
to  develop  in  them  republican  manners,  love  of  country,  and 
taste  for  labor. 

"  Art.  3.  They  learn  to  speak,  read,  and  write  the  French 
language. 


400  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

44  They  are  taught  the  acts  of  virtue  which  most  honor  free 
men,  and  particularly  the  acts  of  the  French  Revolution  most 
fit  to  give  them  elevation  of  soul,  and  to  make  them  worthy 
of  liberty  and  equality. 

"  They  acquire  some  notions  of  the  geography  of  France. 

"  The  knowledge  of  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  man  and 
the  citizen  is  brought  within  their  comprehension  through 
examples  and  their  own  experience. 

"  They  are  given  the  first  notions  of  the  natural  objects 
that  surround  them,  and  of  the  natural  action  of  the 
elements. 

44  They  have  practice  in  the  use  of  numbers,  of  the  com- 
pass, the  level,  weights  and  measures,  the  lever,  the  pulley, 
and  in  the  measurement  of  time. 

4 '  They  are  often  allowed  to  witness  what  is  done  in  the 
fields  and  in  workshops  ;  and  the}'  take  part  in  these  em- 
ployments as  far  as  their  age  permits." 

But  the  bill  of  Romme  was  not  put  in  operation.  The 
Convention  presently  decided  on  a  revision  of  the  decree  it 
had  passed,  and  the  bill  of  Bouquier  was  substituted  for  the 
bill  of  Romme. 

465.  THE  BOUQUIER  LAW  (Dec.  19,  1793).  —  Bouquier 
was  a  man  of  letters,  deputy  from  Dordogue,  and  belonged 
to  the  Jacobinic  party.  He  spoke  of  his  bill  as  follows  :— - 

44  It  is  a  simple  and  natural  scheme,  and  one  easy  to  exe- 
cute ;  a  plan  which  forever  proscribes  all  idea  of  an  academic 
body,  of  a  scientific  society,  of  an  educational  hierarchy  :  a 
plan,  finally,  whose  bases  are  the  same  as  those  of  the  con- 
stitution, liberty,  equality,  and  simplicity." 

The  Bouquier  bill  was  adopted  December  19,  and  remained 
in  force  till  it  was  superseded  by  the  Lakanal  law. 

These  are  its  principal  provisions :  — 


THE   CONVENTION.  401 

"  The  right  to  teach  is  open  to  all."  "  Citizens,  men  and 
women,  who  would  use  the  liberty  to  teach,  shall  be  required 
to  produce  a  certificate  of  citizenship  and  good  morals,  and 
to  fulfill  certain  formalities."  "  They  shall  be  designated  as 
instituteurs  and  institutrices."  They  shall  be  placed  "  under 
the  immediate  supervision  of  the  municipality,  of  parents, 
and  of  all  the  citizens."  "  They  are  forbidden  to  teach  any- 
thing contrary  to  the  laws  and  to  republican  morality."  On 
the  other  hand,  parents  are  required  to  send  their  children  to 
the  primary  schools.  Parents  who  do  not  obey  this  order 
are  sentenced,  for  the  first  offence,  to  pay  a  fine  equal  to  a 
fourth  of  their  school  tax.  In  case  of  a  second  offence,  the 
fine  is  to  be  doubled  and  the  children  to  be  suspended  for  ten 
years  from  their  rights  as  citizens.  Finally,  young  people 
who,  on  leaving  the  primary  schools,  "  do  not  busy  them- 
selves with  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  shall  be  required  to 
learn  a  trade  useful  to  society." 

Enforced  school  attendance,  and  what  is  an  entirely  differ- 
ent thing,  the  obligation  of  citizens  to  work,  were  thus  estab- 
lished by  the  Bouquier  law. 

Let  us  add  that  the  author  of  this  bill,  which,  like  so  many 
others,  was  not  executed,  had  strange  notions  on  the  sciences 
and  on  instruction. 

"  The  speculative  sciences,"  he  says,  "  detach  from  society 
the  individuals  who  cultivate  them.  .  .  .  Free  nations  have 
no  need  of  speculative  scholars,  whose  minds  are  constantly 
travelling  over  desert  paths." 

Hence,  no  scientific  instruction.  The  real  schools,  "  the 
noblest,  the  most  useful,  the  most  simple,  are  the  meetings 
of  committees.  The  Revolution,  in  establishing  national 
holidays,  in  creating  popular  associations  and  clubs,  has 
placed  in  all  quarters  inexhaustible  sources  of  instruction. 
Then  let  us  not  go  and  substitute  for  this  organization,  as 


402  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

simple  and  sublime  as  the  people  that  creates  it,  an  artificial 
organization,  based  on  academic  statutes  which  should  no 
longer  infect  a  regenerated  nation." 

466.  THE  LAKANAL  LAW  (Nov.  17,  1794).— There  still 
remained  something  of  the  spirit  of  Lepelletier  in  the  Bouquu-r 
law,  though  the  idea  of  an  education  in  common  had  been 
abandoned ;  but  the  Lakanal  law  openly  breaks  with  the  ten- 
dencies of  Robespierre  and  his  friends. 

The  law  which  was  passed  November  17,  1794,  upon  the 
report  of  Lakanal,  reproduced  in  its  spirit  and  in  its  principal 
provisions  the  original  bill  which  the  influence  of  Robespierre 
had  defeated. 

The  following  was  the  programme  of  instruction  contained 
in  this  law. 

The  instructor  shall  teach  :  — 

"1.  Reading  and  writing;  2.  the  declaration  of  the 
rights  of  man  and  the  constitution  ;  3.  elementary  lessons 
on  republican  morals ;  4.  the  elements  of  the  French  lan- 
guage both  spoken  and  written  ;  5.  the  rules  of  simple  cal- 
culation and  of  surveying ;  6.  lessons  on  the  principal 
phenomena  and  the  most  common  productions  of  nature ; 
there  shall  be  taught  a  collection  of  heroic  actions  and  songs 
of  triumph." 

At  the  same  time  the  bill  required  that  the  schools  be 
divided  into  two  sections,  one  for  the  girls  and  the  other  for 
the  boys,  and  distributed  in  the  proportion  of  one  to  each 
thousand  inhabitants.  The  teachers,  nominated  by  the  people 
and  confirmed  by  a  jury  of  instruction,  are  to  receive  salaries 
as  follows :  men,  twelve  hundred  francs  ;  women,  one  thou- 
sand francs. 

467.  PEDAGOGICAL  METHODS.  —  Lakanal  had  given  much 
thought  to  pedagogical  methods.     It  is  the  interior  of  the 
school,  not  less  than  its  exterior  organization,  that  preoc- 


THE  CONVENTION.  403 

cupied  his  generous  spirit.  Like  the  most  of  his  contem- 
poraries, a  partisan  of  Condillac's  doctrine,  he  believed  that 
the  idea  could  not  reach  the  understanding  except  through 
the  mediation  of  the  senses.  Consequently,  he  recommended 
the  method  which  consists  "  in  first  appealing  to  the  eyes  of 
pupils,  .  .  .  in  creating  the  understanding  through  the  senses, 
...  in  developing  morals  out  of  the  sensibility,  just  as  un- 
derstanding out  of  sensation."  This  is  an  excellent  method 
if  we  add  to  it  a  corrective,  if  we  do  not  forget  to  excite  the 
intelligence  itself,  and  to  make  an  appeal  to  the  interior  forces 
of  the  soul. 

468.  ELEMENTARY  BOOKS. — A  few  other  quotations  will 
suffice  to  prove   with   what   acuteness   of   pedagogic   sense 
Lakanal  was  endowed.1     Very  much  interested  in  the  com- 
position of  works  for  popular  instruction,  he  sharply  distin- 
guished the  elementary  book,  which  brings  knowledge  within 
the  reach  of  children,  from  the  abridgment,  which  does  no 
more  than  condense  a  long  work.     "  The  abridged,"  he  said, 
"  is  exactly  opposed  to  the  elementary."     No  one  has  better 
comprehended  than  he  the  difficulty  of  writing  a  treatise  on 
morals  for  the  use  of  children :  — 

"It  requires  special  genius.  Simplicity  in  form  and  art- 
less grace  should  there  be  mingled  with  accuracy  of  ideas  ; 
the  art  of  reasoning  ought  never  to  be  separated  from  that 
of  interesting  the  imagination  ;  such  a  work  should  be  con- 
ceived by  a  profound  logician  and  executed  by  a  man  of 
feeling.  There  should  be  found  in  it,  so  to  speak,  the  ana- 
lytical mind  of  Condillac  and  the  soul  of  Fe"nelon." 

469.  GEOGRAPHY. — Lakanal  has  defined  with  the  same 
exactness  the  method  to  be   followed   in   the   teaching   of 
geography.       "First   let   there   be    shown,"  he    says,  "in 

1  See  in  the  Revue  politi.que  et  litteraire,  for  Oct.  7,  1882,  an  excellent 
article  on  Lakanal,  by  Monsieur  Janet. 


404  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

every  school,  the  plan  of  the  commune  in  which  it  is  situated, 
and  then  let  the  children  see  a  map  of  the  canton  of  which 
the  commune  forms  a  part ;  then  a  map  of  the  department, 
and  then  a  map  of  France  ;  after  which  will  come  the  map 
of  Europe  and  of  other  parts  of  the  world,  and  lastly  a  map 
of  the  world.1 

470.  LETTERS  AND  SCIENCES. — More  just  than  Condorcet, 
Lakanal  did  not  wish  scientific  culture  to  do   prejudice   to 
literary  culture :  — 

"  For  a  long  time  we  have  neglected  the  belles-lettres, 
and  some  men  who  wish  to  be  considered  profound  regard 
this  stud}*  as  useless.  It  is  letters,  however,  which  open 
the  intelligence  to  the  light  of  reason,  and  the  heart  to 
impressions  of  sentiment.  They  substitute  morality  for 
interest,  give  pupils  polish,  exercise  their  judgment,  make 
them  more  sensitive  and  at  the  same  time  more  obedient  to 
the  laws,  more  capable  of  grand  virtues." 

471.  NECESSITY  OF  NORMAL  SCHOOLS.  —  Lakanal's  highest 
title  to  glory  is  that  he  has  associated  his  name  with   the 
foundation  of  normal  schools.       The   idea   of   establishing 
pedagogical  seminaries  was  not  absolutely  new.     A  number 
of  the  friends  of  instruction,  both  in  the  seventeenth  and  in 
the  eighteenth  century,2  had  seen  that  it  would  be  useless  to 
open   schools,   if   good   teachers   had   not   been   previously 

1  If  the  consensus  of  philosophic  opinion  is  trustworthy,  there  is  no  basis 
whatever  in  psychology  for  this  sequence.    On  the  almost  uniform  testi- 
mony of  psychologists,  the  organic  mental  sequence  is  from  aggregates  to 
parts;  so  that  if  the  method  of  presentation  is  to  be  in  harmony  with  the 
organic  mode  of  the  mind's  activities,  the  sequence  should  be  as  follows: 
the  globe:  the  eastern  continent;  Europe;  France;  the  department:  the 
canton;  the  commune.    On  the  mental  sequence,  see  Hamilton's  Lectures, 
Vol.  I.  pp.  69,  70,  368,  371,  469,  498,  500,  502,  503.    (P.) 

2  Dumonstier,  rector  of  the  University  of  Paris  in  1645,  La  Salle,  and  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  Abbe  Courtalon. 


THE  CONVENTION.  405 

trained  ;  but  the  Convention  has  the  honor  of  having  for  the 
first  time  given  practical  effect  to  this  vague  aspiration. 

Decreed  June  2,  1793,  the  foundation  of  normal  schools 
was  the  object  of  a  report  by  Lakanal  on  October  26,  1794. 
In  a  style  which  was  inferior  to  his  ideas,  and  which  would 
have  been  more  effective  had  it  been  simpler,  Lakanal  sets 
forth  the  necessity  of  teaching  the  teachers  themselves  be- 
fore sending  them  to  teach  their  pupils  :  — 

"Are  there  in  France,  are  there  in  Europe,  are  there  in 
the  whole  world,  two  or  three  hundred  men  (and  we  need 
more  than  this  number)  competent  to  teach  the  useful  arts 
and  the  necessary  branches  of  knowledge,  according  to 
methods  which  make  minds  more  acute,  and  truths  more 
clear, — methods  which,  while  teaching  you  to  know  one 
thing,  teach  you  to  reason  upon  all  things  ?  No,  that  number 
of  men,  however  small  it  may  appear,  exists  nowhere  on  the 
earth.  It  is  necessaiy,  then,  that  they  be  trained.  In  being 
the  first  to  decree  normal  schools,  yo.u  have  resolved  to  create 
in  advance  a  very  large  number  of  teachers,  capable  of  be- 
ing the  executors  of  a  plan  whose  purpose  is  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  human  understanding,  in  a  republic  of  twenty-five 
millions  of  men,  all  of  whom  democracy  renders  equal." 

The  term  normal  schools  (from  the  Latin  word  norma,  a 
rule)  was  not  less  new  than  the  thing.  Lakanal  explains 
that  it  was  designed  by  this  expression  to  characterize  with 
exactness  the  schools  which  were  to  be  the  type  and  the 
standard  of  all  the  others. 

472.  THE  NORMAL  SCHOOL  OF  PARIS. — To  accomplish 
his  purpose,  Lakanal  proposed  to  assemble  at  Paris,  under 
the  direction  of  eminent  masters,  such  as  Lagrange,  Berthol- 
let,  and  Daubenton,  a  considerable  number  of  young  men, 
called  from  all  quarters  of  the  Republic,  and  designated  "by 
their  talents  as  by  their  state  of  citizenship."  The  masters 


406  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

of  this  great  normal  school  were  to  give  their  pupils  ' '  lessons 
on  the  art  of  teaching  morals,  .  .  .  and  teach  them  to  apply 
to  the  teaching  of  reading  and  writing,  of  the  first  elements 
of  calculation,  of  practical  geometry,  of  history  and  of 
French  grammar,  the  methods  outlined  in  the  elementary 
courses  adopted  by  the  National  Convention  and  published 
by  its  orders."  Once  instructed  "  in  the  art  of  teaching 
human  knowledge,  "the  pupils  of  the  Normal  School  of  Paris 
were  to  go  and  repeat  in  all  parts  of  the  Republic  the  "  grand 
lectures"  they  had  heard,  and  there  form  the  nucleus  of  pro- 
vincial normal  schools.  And  thus,  says  Lakanal  with  exag- 
geration, "  that  fountain  of  enlightenment,  so  pure  and  so 
abundant,  since  it  will  proceed  from  the  foremost  men  of  the 
Republic  of  every  class,  poured  out  from  reservoir  to  reser- 
voir, will  diffuse  itself  from  place  to  place  throughout  all 
France,  without  losing  anything  of  its  purity  in  its  course." 
October  30,  1794,  the  Convention  adopted  the  proposals 
of  Lakanal.  The  Normal  School  opened  January  20,  17'Jo. 
Its  organization  was  defective  and  impracticable.  First,  there 
were  too  many  pupils,  —  four  hundred  young  men  admitted 
without  competitive  tests,  and  abandoned  to  themselves  in 
Paris  ;  professors  who  were  doubtless  illustrious,  but  whose 
literary  talent  or  scientific  genius  did  not  perhaps  adapt  itsrlf 
sufficiently  to  the  needs  of  a  normal  course  of  instruction  and 
of  a  practical  pedagogy ;  lectures  insufficient  in  number, 
which  lasted  for  only  four  months,  and  which,  on  the  t3sti- 
mouy  of  Daunou,  "were  directed  rather  towards  the  heights 
of  science  than  towards  the  art  of  teaching."  Thus  the 
experiment,  which  tenninated  May  6,  1795,  did  not  fulfill 
the  hopes  that  had  been  formed  of  it :  the  idea  of  establish- 
ing provincial  normal  schools  was  not  carried  out.  But  no 
matter;  a  memorable  example  had  been  given,  and  the  fruit- 
ful principle  of  the  establishment  of  normal  schools  had  made 
a  start  in  actual  practice. 


THE  CONTENTION.  407 

473.  CENTRAL  SCHOOLS.  —  The  central  schools,  designed 
to  replace  the  colleges  of  secondary  instruction,  were  estab- 
lished by  decree  of  February  25,   1795,   on  the  report  of 
Lakanal.     Daunou  modified  them  in  the  law  of  October  25, 
1795.     They  continued,  without  great  success,  till  the  law  of 
May  1,  1802,  which  suppressed  them. 

474.  DEFECTS  OF  THE  CENTRAL  SCHOOLS.  —  The  Central 
Schools  of  Lakanal  resembled,  trait  for  trait,  the  Institutes 
of  Condorcet.     And  it  must  be  confessed  that  here  the  imi- 
tation is  not  happy.     Lakanal  made  the  mistake  of  borrow- 
ing from  Condorcet  the  plan  of  these  poorly  defined  establish- 
ments, in  which  the  instruction  was  on  too  vast  a  scale,  and 
the  programmes  too  crowded,  where  the  pupil,  it  seems,  wns 
to  learn  to  discuss  de  omni  re  scibili.     Condorcet  went  so  far 
as  to  introduce  into  his  Institutes  a  course  of  lectures  on  mid- 
wifery !     The  Central  Schools,  in  which  the  instruction  was 
a  defile,  of  studies  indiscreetly  presented  to  an  overdriven 
auditory,  do  honor  neither  to  the  Convention  that  organized 
them,  nor  to  Condorcet  who  had  traced  the  first  sketch  of 
them. 

475.  POSITIVE  AND  PRACTICAL  SPIRIT.  —  However,   there 
Avas  something  correct  in  the  idea  which  presided  over  the 
foundation  of  the  Central  Schools.    We  find  this  expressed  in 
the  Essays  on  Instruction,  by  the  mathematician,  Lacroix.1 
Lacroix  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  progress  of  the 
sciences  and  the  necessity  of  learning  a  great  number  of  new 
things,  impose  on  the  educator  the  obligation  to  take  some 
account  of  space  ;  and,  if  I  may  so  speak,  of  clipping  the 
wings  of  studies  which,  like  Latin,  had  thus  far  been  the 
unique  and  exclusive  object  of  instruction.    . 

1  Essais  sur  1'enseignement.    Paris,  1805. 


THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

In  the  Central  Schools,  in  fact,  the  classical  languages 
held  only  the  second  place.  Not  only  were  the  mathematical 
sciences,  and  those  branches  of  knowledge  from  which  the 
pupil  can  derive  the  most  immediate  profit,  associated  with  the 
classics,  but  the  preference  was  given  to  them.  In  the  minds 
of  those  who  organized  these  schools,  the  positive  and  prac- 
tical idea  of  success  in  life  was  substituted  for  the  speculative 
and  disinterested  idea  of  mental  development  for  its  own  sake. 
In  reality,  these  two  ideas  ought  to  complete  each  other, 
and  not  to  exclude  each  other.  The  ideal  of  education  con- 
sists in  finding  a  system  which  welcomes  both.  But  in  the 
Central  Schools  the  first  point  of  view  absorbed  the  second. 
These  establishments  resembled  the  industrial  schools  of  our 
day,  but  with  this  particular  defect,  that  there  was  a  deter- 
"mination  to  include  everything  in  them,  and  to  give  a  place 
to  new  studies  without  wholly  sacrificing  the  old.  Let  there 
be  created  colleges  of  practical  and  special  instruction  ;  noth- 
ing can  be  better,  for  provision  would  thus  be  made  for  the 
needs  of  modern  society.  But  let  no  one  force  literary  studies 
and  the  industrial  arts  to  live  together  under  the  same  roof. 

476.  GREAT  FOUNDATIONS  OF  THE  CONVENTION.  —  In  the 
first  years  of  its  existence,  the  Convention  had  given  its  at- 
tention only  to  primary  schools.  It  seemed  as  though  teach- 
ing the  illiterate  to  read  was  the  one  need  of  society.  In  the 
end  the  Convention  rose  above  these  narrow  and  exclusive 
views,  and  turned  its  attention  towards  secondary  instruction 
and  towards  superior  instruction.  It  is  particularly  by  the 
establishment  of  several  special  schools  for  superior  instruc- 
tion that  the  Convention  gave  proof  of  its  versatility  and 
intelligence. 

In  quick  succession  it  decreed  and  founded  the  Polytechnic 
School,  under  the  name  of  the  Central  School  of  Public  Works 


THE  CONVENTION.  409 

(March  11,  1794)  ;  the  Normal  School  (October  30, 1794)  ; 
the  School  of  Mars  (June  1,  1794)  ;  the  Conservatory  of  Arts 
and  Trades  (September  29,  1794).  The  next  year  it  organ- 
ized the  Bureau  of  Longitudes,  and  finally  the  National  Insti- 
tute. What  a  magnificent  effort  to  repair  the  ruins  which 
anarchy  had  made,  or  to  supply  the  omissions  which  the  old 
regime  had  patiently  suffered  !  Of  these  multiplied  creations 
the  greater  number  remain  and  still  flourish. 

477.  LAW  OP  OCTOBER  27,  1795.  —  Those  who  ask  us  to 
see  in  the  decree  of  October  27,  1795,  "  the  capital  work  of 
the  Convention  in  the  matter  of  instruction,  the  synthesis  of 
all  its  previous  labors  and  proposals,  the  most  serious  effort 
of  the  Revolution,"1  evidently  put  forward  a  paradox.  La- 
kanal  and  his  friends  would  certainly  have  disavowed  a  law 
which  cancels  with  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen  the  grand  revo- 
lutionary principles  in  the  matter  of  education,  —  the  gratu- 
ity, the  obligation,  and  the  universality  of  instruction. 

The  destinies  of  public  instruction  are  allied  to  the  fate  of 
constitutions.  To  changes  of  policy  there  correspond,  by  an 
inevitable  recoil,  analogous  changes  in  the  organization  of  in- 
struction. Out  of  the  slightly  retrograde  constitution  of  1793 
there  issued  the  educational  legislation  of  1794,  of  which  it 
could  be  said  that  "  the  spirit  of  reaction  made  itself  pain- 
fully felt  in  it." 

Daunou,  who  was  the  principal  author  of  it,  doubtless  had 
high  competence  in  questions  of  public  instruction  ;  but  with 
a  secret  connivance  of  his  own  temperament  he  yielded  to  the 
tendencies  of  the  times.  He  voluntarily  condescended  to 
the  timidities  of  a  senile  and  worn-out  Assembly,  which, 
having  become  impoverished  by  a  series  of  suicides,  had 
scarcely  any  superior  minds  left  within  it. 

1  Albert  Duruy,  op.  cit.  p.  137. 


410  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

478.  INSUFFICIENCY  OF  DAUNOTT'S  SCHEME.  —  Nothing 
could  be  more  defective  than  Daunou's  plan.  The  number 
of  primary  schools  was  reduced.  It  is  no  longer  proposed 
to  proportion  them  to  the  population.  Daunou  goes  back  to 
the  cantoual  schools  of  Talleyrand:  "There  shall  be  estab- 
lished in  each  canton  of  the  Republic  one  or  more  primary 
schools."  We  are  far  from  Condorcet.  who  required  a  school 
for  each  group  of  four  hundred  souls,  and  from  Lakaual,  who 
demanded  one  for  each  thousand  inhabitants.  On  the  other 
hand,  teachers  no  longer  receive  a  salary  from  the  State. 
The  State  merely  assures  to  them  a  place  for  a  class-room 
and  lodging,  and  also  a  garden  !  "  There  shall  likewise  be  fur- 
nished the  teacher  the  garden  which  happens  to  lie  near  these 
premises."  There  is  no  other  remuneration  save  the  annual 
tuition  paid  by  each  pupil  to  the  teacher.  At  the  same  stroke 
the  teacher  was  made  the  hireling  of  his  pupils,  and  gratuity 
of  instruction  was  abolished.  Only  the  indigent  pupils,  a 
fourth  of  the  whole  number,  could  be  exempted  by  the  muni- 
cipal administration  from  the  payment  of  school  fees.  Finally, 
the  programme  of  studies  was  reduced  to  the  humblest  pro- 
portions :  reading,  writing,  number,  and  the  elements  of 
republican  morality. 

After  so  many  noble  and  generous  ambitions,  after  so 
many  enthusiastic  declarations  in  favor  of  the  absolute  gra- 
tuity of  priman"  instruction,  after  so  many  praiseworthy 
efforts  to  raise  the  material  and  moral  condition  of  teachers, 
and  to  cause  instruction  to  circulate  to  the  minutest  fibres  of 
the  social  tissue,  the  Convention  terminated  its  work  in  a 
mean  conception  which  thinned  out  the  schools,  which  im- 
poverished the  programmes,  which  plunged  the  teacher  anew 
into  a  precarious  state  of  existence,  which  put  him  anew  at 
the  mercy  of  his  pupils,  without,  however,  taking  care  to 
assure  him  of  patronage,  and  which,  for  his  sole  compensa- 


THE   CONVENTION.  411 

tion  in  case  he  had  no  pupils  to  instruct,  guaranteed  him  the 
right  to  cultivate  a  garden,  if,  indeed,  there  should  be  one  in 
the  neighborhood  of  the  school!  Had  the  law  of  1795  been 
in  fact  the  educational  will  of  the  Convention,  is  it  not  true, 
at  least,  that  it  is  after  the  manner  of  those  wills  extorted  by 
undue  means,  where  a  man  by  his  final  bequests  recalls  his 
former  acts,  and  proves  himself  faithless  to  all  the  aspirations 
of  his  life  ? 

No,  it  is  not  from  Daunou,  but  from  Talleyrand,  from 
Condorcet,  and  from  Lakanal  that  we  must  seek  the  real 
educational  thought  of  the  Revolution.  Doubtless  the  meas- 
ure of  Dauuou  had  over  all  previous  measures  the  advan- 
tages of  being  applied,  and  of  not  remaining  a  dead  letter ; 
but  the  glory  of  the  early  Revolutionists  should  not  be  belit- 
tled by  the  fact  that  circumstances  arrested  the  execution  of 
their  plans,  and  that  a  century  was  necessary  in  order  that 
society  might  attain  the  ideal  which  they  had  conceived. 
They  were  the  first  to  proclaim  the  right  and  the  duty  of  each 
citizen  to  be  instructed  and  enlightened.  We  are  ceaselessly 
urged  to  admire  the  past  and  to  respect  the  work  of  our 
fathers.  We  do  not  in  the  least  object  to  this,  but  the  Rev- 
olution itself  also  forms  a  part  of  that  j>ast,  and  we  regret 
that  the  men  who  so  eloquently  preach  the  worship  of  tradi- 
tions and  respect  for  ancestors,  are  precisely  those  who  the 
most  harshly  disparage  the  efforts  of  the  Revolution. 

[479.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  educational  legis- 
lation of  the  French  Revolution,  apparently  so  inconsiderate, 
so  vacillating,  and  so  fruitless,  betrays  the  instinctive  feeling 
of  a  nation  in  peril,  that  the  only  constitutional  means  of  re- 
generation is  universal  instruction,  intellectual  and  moral. 

2.  Out  of  the  same  instinct  grew  the  conception  that  the 
starting-point  in  educational  reform  is  the  instruction  and 


412  THE    HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

inspiration  of  the  teaching  body.     The  normal  school  lies  r.t 
the  very  basis  of  national  safety  and  prosperity. 

3.  The  immediate  fruitlessness  of  the  educational  legisla- 
tion of  the  Revolution,  is  another  illustration  of  the  general 
fact  that  no  reform  is  operative,  which  in  any  considerable 
degiee  antedates  the  existing  state  of  public  opinion.  Could 
there  be  a  revelation  of  the  ideal  education,  human  society 
could  grow  into  it  only  by  slow  and  almost  insensible  degrees. 
While  there  can  be  rational  growth  only  through  some  degree 
of  anticipation,  it  is  perhaps  best  that  educators  have  only 
that  prevision  which  is  provisional.] 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

PESTALOZZI. 

GERMAN  PEDAGOGY  ;  THE  PIETISTS  AND  TRANCHE  (1663-1727)  J  THE 
PHILANTHROPISTS  AND  BASEDOW  (1723-1790)  J  THE  PEOPLE'S  SCHOOLS; 
PESTALOZZI  (1746-1827);  THE  EDUCATION  OF  PESTALOZZI;  PESTA- 
LOZZI AS  AN  AGRICULTURIST;  HOW  PESTALOZZI  BECAME  A  TEACHER; 

EDUCATION  OF  HIS  SON  J  THE  SCHOOL  AT  NEUHOF  (1775-1780)  ;  PES- 
TALOZZI AS  A  WRITER  (1780-1787)  J  LEONARD  AND  GERTRUDE 
(1781)  J  NEW  EXPERIMENTS  IN  AGRICULTURE  J  OTHER  WORKS ;  THE 
ORPHAN  ASYLUM  AT  8TANZ  (1798-1799)  ;  METHODS  FOLLOWED  AT 
STANZ  ;  THE  SCHOOLS  AT  BURGDORF  (1799-1801)  ;  HOW  GERTRUDE 
TEACHES  HER  CHILDREN  (1801)  ;  PESTALOZZl'S  STYLE  J  ANALYSIS 
OF  THE  GERTRUDE  J  THE  INSTITUTE  AT  BURGDORF  (1801-1804)  ; 
THE  INSTITUTE  AT  YVERDUN  (1805-1825)  ;  TENTATIVES  OF  PESTA- 
LOZZI ;  ESSENTIAL  PRINCIPLES;  EDUCATIONAL  PROCESSES;  SIMPLI- 
FICATION OF  METHODS;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


480 .,  GERMAN  PEDAGOGY.  —  For  two  centuries  Germany 
has  been  the  classical  land  of  pedagogy ;  and  to  render  an 
account  of  all  the  efforts  put  forth  in  that  country  in  the 
domain  of  education  it  would  be  necessary  to  write  several 
volumes. 

From  the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  centun~,  says  Dittes, 
"  a  change  for  the  better  takes  place.  Ideas  become  facts. 
The  importance  of  education  is  more  and  more  recognized  ; 
pedagogy  shakes  off  the  ancient  dust  of  the  school  and  in- 
terests itself  in  actual  life ;  it  is  no  longer  willing  to  be  a 
collateral  function  of  the  Church,  but  begins  to  become  an 
independent  art  and  science.  A  few  theologians  will  still 
render  it  important  service,  but  in  general  they  will  do  this 
outside  the  Church,  and  often  in  opposition  to  it." 


414  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

While  awaiting  the  grand  and  fruitful  impulsion  of  Pesta- 
lozzi,  the  history  of  pedagogy  ought  to  mention  at  least  tlie 
Pietists,  "  whose  educational  establishments  contributed  to 
prepare  the  way  for  the  new  methods,"  and  after  them,  the 
Philanthropists,  of  whom  Basedow  is  the  most  celebrated 
representative. 

481.  THE  PIETISTS  AND  FRANCKE  (1663-1727). —  Francke 
played  nearly  the  same  part  in  Germany  that  La  Salle  did  in 
France.    He  founded  two  establishments  at  Halle,  the  Pceda- 
gogium  and  the  Orphan  Asylum,  which,  in  1727,  contained 

/more  than  two  thousand  pupils.  He  belonged  to  tiie  sect  of 
Pietists,  Lutherans  who  professed  an  austere  morality,  and, 
f  in  conformity  with  the  principles  of  his  denomination,  he 
made  piety  the  supreme  end  of  education. 

That  which  distinguishes  and  commends  Francke,  is  his 
talent  for  organization.  He  was  right  in  giving  marked  at- 
tention to  the  material  condition  of  schools  and  to  needed 
supplies  of  apparatus.  The  Psedagogium  was  installed  in  1 715 
in  comfortable  quarters,  and  there  were  annexed  to  it  a 
botanical  garden,  a  museum  of  natural  history,  physical  ap- 
paratus, a  chemical  and  an  anatomical  laboratory,  and  a  shop 
for  the  cutting  and  polishing  of  glass. 

After  him  his  disciples,  Niemeyer,  Semler,  and  Hecker, 
continued  his  work,  and,  in  certain  respects,  reformed  it. 
They  founded  the  first  reed  schools  of  Germany.  They  kept 
up  the  practical  spirit,  the  professional  pedagogy  qf  their 
master,  and  assured  the  development  of  those  educational 
establishments  which  still  exist  to-day  under  the  name  of 
the  Institutions  of  Francke. 

482.  THE  PHILANTHROPISTS  AND  BASEDOW  (1723-1790). — 
With  Basedow,  a  more  liberal  spirit,  borrowed  in  part  from 
Rousseau,  gained  entrance  into  German  pedagogy.    Basedow 


PESTALOZZI.  415 

founded  at  Dessau  a  school  which  received  the  praise  of  the 
philosopher  Kaiit,  and  of  the  clergyman  Oberliu.  He  desig- 
nated it  by  a  name  which  reflects  his  humanitarian  intentions, 
the  Philanthropinum.  In  the  methods  which  he  employed  in 
it  he  seems  always  to  have  had  before  his  eyes  the  exclama- 
tion of  Rousseau:  ''Things,  things!  Too  many  words!" 
The  intuitive  method,  or  that  of  teaching  by  sight,  was  prac- 
tised in  the  school  of  Dessau. 

The  principal  work  of  Basedow,  his  Elementary  Book,  is 
scarcely  more  than  the  Orbis  Pictus  of  Comenius  recon- 
structed according  to  the  principles  of  Rousseau.  At  Dessau, 
the  pretence  was  made  of  teaching  a  language  in  six  months. 
"Our  methods,"  says  Basedow,  "make  studies  only  one- 
third  as  long  and  thrice  as  agreeable."  An  abuse  was  made 
of  mechanical  exercises.  The  children,  at  the  command  of 
the  master  :  Imitamini  sartorem,  —  Imitamini  sutorem,  —  all 
began  to  imitate  the  motions  of  a  tailor  who  is  sewing,  or  of 
a  shoemaker  who  is  using  his  awl.  Graver  still,  Basedow 
made  such  an  abuse  of  object  lessons  as  to  represent  to  chil- 
dren certain  scenes  within  the  sick-chamber,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  teaching  them  their  duties  and  obligations  to  their 
mothers.1 

483.  SCHOOLS  FOR  THE  PEOPLE.  —  Great  efforts  were  made 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  in  the  Catholic,  as  well  as  in  the 
Protestant  countries  of  Germany,  towards  the  development 
of  popular  instruction.  Maria  Theresa  and  Frederick  II.  con- 
sidered public  instruction  as  an  affair  of  the  State.  Private 
enterprise  was  added  to  the  efforts  of  the  government.  In 
Prussia,  a  nobleman.  Rochow  (1734-18051,  founded  village 

1  Besides  Basedow,  there  should  be  mentioned  among  the  educators  who 
have  become  noted  in  Germany  under  the  name  of  Philanthropists,  Salz- 
man  (1744-1811)  andCampe  (1746-1818). 


41G  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

schools;  and  in  Austria,  two  ecclesiastics,  Felbiger  (1724- 
1788)  and  Kindermann  (1740-1801),  contributed  by  their 
activity  in  education  to  the  reform  of  schools. 

Nevertheless,  the  results  were  still  very  poor,  and  the  pub- 
lic school,  especially  the  village  school,  remained  in  a  sorry 
condition. 

"  Almost  even-where,"  says  Dittes,  "  there  were  employed 
as  teachers,  domestics,  corrupt  artisans,  discharged  soldiers, 
degraded  students,  and,  in  general,  persons  of  questionable 
morality  and  education.  Their  pay  was  mean,  and  their 
authority  slight.  Attendance  at  school,  generally  very  irreg- 
ular, was  almost  everywhere  entirely  suspended  in  summer. 
Many  villages  had  no  school,  and  scarcely  a^-where  was  the 
school  attended  by  all  the  children.  In  many  countries,  most 
of  the  children,  especially  the  girls,  were  wholly  without  in- 
struction. The  people,  especially  the  peasantry,  regarded 
the  school  as  a  burden.  The  clergy,  it  is  true,  always  re- 
garded themselves  as  the  proprietors  of  the  school,  but  on 
the  whole  they  did  but  very  little  for  it,  and  even  arrested  its 
progress.  The  nobility  was  but  little  favorable,  in  general, 
to  intellectual  culture  for  the  people.  .  .  .  Instruction  re- 
mained mechanical  and  the  discipline  rude.  It  is  reported 
that  a  Suabian  schoolmaster,  who  died  in  1782,  had  inflicted 
during  his  experience  in  teaching  911,527  canings,  124,010 
whippings,  10,235  boxes  on  the  ear,  and  1,115,800  thumps 
on  the  head.  Moreover,  he  had  made  boys  kneel  777  times 
on  triangular  sticks,  had  caused  the  fool's  cap  to  be  worn 
5001 l  times,  and  the  stick  to  be  held  in  air  1707  times.  He 
had  used  something  like  3000  words  of  abuse.  .  .  ." 


1  "What  a  painstaking  soul  to  be  so  exact  in  his  accounts !  Doubtless  he 
had  an  eye  to  the  future  publication  of  his  record  as  a  maitre  de  fouet ! 
This  account  is  rather  too  exact  to  be  trustworthy.  (P.) 


PESTALOZZI.  417 

484.  PESTALOZZI  (1746-1827). — In  Switzerland,  the  sit- 
uation of  primary  instruction  was  scarcely  better.  The 
teachers  were  gathered  up  at  hazard  ;  their  pay  was  wretched  ; 
in  general  the}'  had  no  lodgings  of  their  own,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  hire  themselves  out  for  domestic  service  among  the 
well-off  inhabitants  of  the  villages,  in  order  to  find  food  and 
lodging  among  them.  A  mean  spirit  of  caste  still  dominated 
instruction,  and  the  poor  remained  sunk  in  ignorance. 

It  was  in  the  very  midst  of  this  wretched  and  unpropitious 
state  of  affairs  that  there  appeared,  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  most  celebrated  of  modern  educators, 
a  man  who,  we  may  be  sure,  was  not  exempt  from  faults, 
whose  mind  had  deficiencies  and  weaknesses,  and  whom  we 
have  no  intention  of  shielding  from  criticism,  b}'  covering 
him  with  the  praises  of  a  superstitious  admiration  ;  but  who 
is  pre-eminently  great  by  reason  of  his  unquenchable  love  for 
the  people,  his  ardent  self -sacrifice,  and  his  pedagogic  instinct. 
During  the  eighty  years  of  his  troubled  life,  Pestalozzi  never 
ceased  to  work  for  children,  and  to  devote  himself  to  their 
instruction.  War  or  the  ill-will  of  his  countrymen  destroyed 
his  schools  to  no  purpose.  Without  ever  despairing,  he 
straightway  rebuilt  them  farther  away,  sometimes  succeed- 
ing, through  the  gift  of  ardent  speech,  which  never  deserted 
him,  in  communicating  the  inspiration  to  those  about  him; 
gathering  up  in  all  places  orphans  and  vagabonds,  like  a  kid- 
napper of  a  new  species  ;  forgetting  that  he  was  poor,  when 
he  saw  an  occasion  to  be  charitable,  and  that  he  was  ill,  when 
it  was  necessary  to  teach  ;  and,  finally,  pursuing  with  an  un- 
conquerable energy,  through  hindrances  and  obstacles  of 
every  description,  his  educational  apostleship.  "  It  is  death 
or  success  !  "  he  wrote.  "  My  zeal  to  accomplish  the  dream 
of  my  life  would  have  carried  me  through  air  or  through  fire, 
no  matter  how,  to  the  highest  peak  of  the  Alps  !  " 


418  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

485.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  PESTALOZZI.  —  The  life  of  Pes- 
talozzi  is  intimately  related  to  his  educational  work.     To 
comprehend  the  educator,  it  is  first  necessary  to  have  become 
acquainted  with  the  man. 

Born  at  Zurich  in  1746,  Pestalozzi  died  at  Brugg  in  Argo- 
via  in  1827.  This  unfortunate  great  man  always  felt  the 
effects  of  the  sentimental  and  unpractical  education  given 
him  by  his  mother,  who  was  left  a  widow  with  three  children 
in  1751.  He  early  formed  the  habit  of  feeling  and  of  being 
touched  with  emotion,  rather  than  of  reasoning  and  of  reflect- 
ing. The  laughing-stock  of  his  companions,  who  made  sport 
of  his  awkwardness,  the  little  scholar  of  Zurich  accustomed 
himself  to  live  alone  and  to  become  a  dreamer.  Later, 
towards  1760,  the  student  of  the  academy  distinguished  him- 
self by  his  political  enthusiasm  and  his  revolutionary  daring. 
At  that  early  period  he  had  conceived  a  profound  feeling  for 
the  miseries  and  the  needs  of  the  people,  and  he  already  pro- 
posed as  the  purpose  of  his  life  the  healing  of  the  diseases  of 
society.  At  the  same  time  there  was  developed  in  him  an 
irresistible  taste  for  a  simple,  frugal,  and  almost  ascetic  life. 
To  restrain  his  desires  had  become  the  essential  rule  of  his 
conduct,  and,  to  put  it  in  practice,  he  forced  himself  to  sleep 
on  a  plank,  and  to  subsist  on  bread  and  vegetables.  Life  in 
the  open  air  had  an  especial  attraction  for  him.  Each  year 
he  spent  his  vacations  in  the  country  at  his  grandfather's,  who 
was  a  minister  at  Hrengg.  Omne  maJnm  ex  urbe  was  his 
favorite  thought. 

486.  PESTALOZZI  AN  AGRICULTURIST  (1765-1775). — Pes- 
talozzi's  call  to  be  a  teacher  manifested  itself  at  first  only  by 
some  vague  aspirations,  of  which  it  would  be  easy  to  find  the 
trace  in  the  short  essays  of  his  youth,  and  in  the  articles 
which  he  contributed  in  his  twentieth  year  to  a  students' 
journal  published  at  Zurich.     After  having  tried  his  hand 


PESTALOZZI.  419 

unsuccessfully  at  theology  and  law,  he  became  an  agricul- 
turist. When  he  established  at  Neuhof  an  agricultural  en- 
terprise, he  thought  less  of  enriching  himself  than  of  raising 
the  material  condition  of  the  Swiss  peasantry  by  organizing 
new  industries.  But  notwithstanding  his  good  intent,  and 
the  assistance  of  the  devoted  woman  whom  he  had  married 
in  1769,  Anna  Schultess,  Pestalozzi,  more  enterprising  than 
skillful,  failed  in  his  industrial  establishments.  In  1775  he 
had  exhausted  his  resources.  It  is  then  that  he  formed  an 
heroic  resolution  which  typifies  his  indiscreet  generosity. 
Poor,  and  scarcely  more  than  able  to  support  himself,  he 
opened  on  his  farm  an  asylum  for  poor  children. 

487.  How  PESTALOZZI  BECAME  AN  EDUCATOR. — The  asy- 
lum for  poor  children  at  Neuhof  (1775-1780)  is,  so  to  speak, 
the  first  step  in  the  pedagogical  career  of  Pestalozzi.     The 
others  will  be  the  orphan  asylum  at  Stanz  (1798-1799),  the 
primary  schools  at  Burgdorf  (1799),  the  institute  atBurgdorf 
(1801-1804),  and,  finally,  the  institute  at  Yverdun  (1805- 
1825). 

The  first  question  that  is  raised  when  we  study  systems 
of  education,  is,  how  the  authors  of  those  systems  became 
teachers. 

The  best,  perhaps,  are  those  who  became  such  because  of 
their  great  love  for  humanity,  or  because  of  their  tender  love 
for  their  children.  Pestalozzi  is  of  this  class.  It  is  because 
he  has  ardently  dreamed  from  his  youth  of  the  moral  amelio- 
ration of  the  people  ;  and  it  is  also  because  he  has  followed 
with  a  tender  solicitude  the  first  steps  of  his  little  son  Jacob 
on  life's  journey,  that  he  became  a  great  teacher. 

488.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  HIS  SON. — The  Father's  Jour- 
nal^ where  Pestalozzi  noted  from  day  to  day  the  progress  of 

1  See  interesting  quotations  from  the  "Journal  d'un  pere,"  in  the  excel- 
lent biography  of  Pestalozzi,  by  Roger  de  Guimps. 


420  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

his  child,  shows  him  intent  on  applying  the  principles  of 
Rousseau.  At  the  age  of  eleven,  Jacob,  like  £mile,  did  not 
yet  know  how  to  read  or  to  write.  Things  before  words,  the 
intuition  of  sensible  objects,  few  exercises  in  judgment, 
respect  for  the  powers  of  the  child,  an  equal  anxiety  to  hus- 
band his  liberty  and  to  secure  his  obedience,  the  con-stunt 
endeavor  to  diffuse  joy  and  good  humor  over  education,— 
such  were  the  principal  traits  of  the  education  which  Pesta- 
lozzi  gave  his  son,  an  education  which  was  a  real  experiment 
in  pedagogy,  from  which  the  pupil  perhaps  suffered  some- 
what, but  from  which  humanity  was  to  derive  profit.  From 
this  period  Pestalozzi  conceived  some  of  the  ideas  which  be- 
came the  principles  of  his  method.  The  father  had  made  the 
educator.  One  of  the  superiorities  of  Pestalozzi  over  Rous- 
seau is,  that  he  loved  and  educated  his  own  child. 

489.  THE  ASYLUM  AT  NEUHOF. — Madame  de  Stae'l  was 
right  in  saying  that  "we  must  consider  Pestalozzi's  school 
as  limited  to  childhood.  The  education  which  it  gives  is 
designed  only  for  the  common  people."  And,  in  fact,  the 
first  and  the  last  establishments  of  Pestalozzi  were  schools 
for  small  children.  In  the  last  years  of  his  life,  when  he 
was  obliged  to  leave  the  institute  of  Yverdun,  he  returned 
to  Xcuhof,  and  there  had  constructed  a  school  for  poor 
children. 

The  school  at  Neuhof  was  to  be  above  all  else,  in  Pesta- 
lozzi's thought,  an  experiment  in  moral  and  material  regen- 
eration through  labor,  through  order,  and  through  instruction. 
Man}'  exercises  in  language,  singing,  reading  of  the  Bible,  — 
such  were  the  intellectual  occupations.  But  the  greater  part 
of  the  time  was  devoted  to  agricultural  labor,  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  madder. 

Notwithstanding  his  admirable  devotion,  Pestalozzi  did  not 
long  succeed  in  his  philanthropic  plans.  He  had  to  contend 


PESTALOZZI.  421 

against  the  prejudices  of  parents,  and  the  ingratitude  of  the 
children.  Very  often  the  little  beggars  whom  he  had  gath- 
ered up  waited  only  till  they  had  received  from  him  new 
clothing,  and  then  ran  away  and  resumed  their  vagabond 
life.  Besides,  he  lacked  resources.  He  became  poor,  and 
fell  more  and  more  into  debt.  His  friends,  who  had  aided 
him  on  the  start,  warned  him  that  he  would  die  in  a,  hospital 
or  in  a  mad-house. 

"For  thirty  years,"  he  says  himself,  "•  my  life  was  a  des- 
perate struggle  against  the  most  frightful  poverty.  .  .  .  More 
than  a  thousand  times  I  was  obliged  to  go  without  dinner, 
and  at  noon,  when  even  the  poorest  were  seated  around  a 
table,  I  devoured  a  morsel  of  bread  upon  the  highway  .  .  .  ; 
and  all  this  that  I  might  minister  to  the  needs  of  the  poor, 
by  the  realization  of  my  principles." 

490.  PESTALOZZI  A  WRITER.  —  After  the  check  to  his  un- 
dertaking at  Neuhof ,  Pestalozzi  renounced  for  some  time  all 
practical  activity,  and  it  was  by  his  writings  that  he  mani- 
fested, from  1780  to  1787,  his  zeal  in  education. 

In  1780  appeared  the  Evening  Hours  of  a  Recluse,  a  series 
of  aphorisms  on  the  rise  of  a  people  through  education.  In 
this,  Pestalozzi  sharply  criticised  the  artificial  method  of  the 
school,  and  insisted  on  the  necessity  of  developing  the  soul 
through  what  is  tcithfn,  —  through  interior  culture  :  — 

"  The  school  everywhere  puts  the  order  of  words  before 
the  order  of  free  nature." 

"  The  home  is  the  basis  of  the  education  of  humanity." 

"  Man,  it  is  within  yourself,  it  is  in  the  inner  sense  of  your 
power,  that  resides  nature's  instrument  for  your  develop- 
ment." 

491.  LEONARD    AND    GERTRUDE.  —  In    1781    Pestalozzi 
published  the  first  volume  of  Leonard  and  Gertrude.     He 


422  THE   HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

had  written  it  within  the  blank  spaces  of  an  old  account  book. 
This  book,  the  most  celebrated  perhaps  of  all  Pestalozzi's 
writings,  is  a  sort  of  popular  romance  in  which  the  author 
brings  upon  the  stage  a  family  of  working-people.  Gertrude 
here  represents  the  ideas  of  Pestalozzi  on  the  education  of 
children.  The  three  other  volumes  (1783,  1785,  1787)  re- 
late the  regeneration  of  a  village  through  the  concerted  action 
of  legislation,  administration,  religion,  and  the  school,  and 
especially  the  school,  "  which  is  the  centre  whence  everything 
should  proceed." 

Leonard  and  Gertrude  is  the  only  one  of  Pestalozzi's 
works  which  Diesterweg1  recommends  to  practical  teachers. 

"  It  was  1113*  first  word,"  says  Pestalozzi,  "  to  the  heart  of 
the  poor  and  of  the  abandoned  of  the  land." 

In  making  Gertrude  the  principal  character  of  his  romance, 
Pestalozzi  wished  to  emphasize  one  of  his  fundamental  ideas, 
which  was  to  place  the  instruction  and  the  education  of  the 
people  in  the  hands  of  mothers. 

492.  NEW  EXPERIMENTS   IN  AGRICULTURE.  —  From  1787 
to  1797  Pestalozzi  returned  to   farming.     It   is   from   this 
period  that  date  his  relations  with  Fellenberg,  the  celebrated 
founder  of  Agricultural  Institutes,  and  with  the  philosopher 
Fichte,  who  showed  him  the  agreement  of  his  ideas  with  the 
doctrine  of  Kant.     His  name  began  to  become  celebrated, 
and,  in  1792,  the   Legislative  Assembly  proclaimed  him  a 
French  citizen,  in  company  with  Washington  and  Klopstock. 

During  these  years  of  farm  labor,  Pestalozzi  had  meditated 
different  works  which  appeared  in  1797. 

493.  OTHER  WORKS  OF  PESTALOZZI.  — Educational  thought 
pervades    all   the    literary  works   of   Pestalozzi.     Thus   his 
Fables,  short  compositions  in  prose,  all  have  a  moral   and 

i  See  Chap.  XIX. 


PESTALOZZI.  423 

educational  tendency.  Also,  in  his  Researches  on  the  Course 
of  Nature  in  the  Development  of  the  Human  Race,  he  sought 
to  justify  the  preponderant  office  which  he  accorded  to  nature 
in  the  education  of  man.  But  Pestalozzi  was  not  successful 
in  philosophical  dissertations. 

"This  book,"  he  says  himself,  "is  to  me  only  another 
proof  of  my  lack  of  ability  ;  it  is  simply  a  diversion  of  my 
imaginative  faculty,  a  work  relatively  weak.  .  .  .  No  one," 
he  adds,  "  understands  me,  and  it  has  been  hinted  that  the 
whole  work  has  been  taken  for  nonsense." 

This  judgment  is  severe,  but  it  is  only  just.  Pestalozzi 
had  an  intuition  of  truth,  but  he  was  incapable  of  giving  a 
theoretical  demonstration  of  it.  His  thought  all  aglow,  and 
his  language  all  imagery,  did  not  submit  to  the  concise  and 
methodical  exposition  of  abstract  truths. 

494.  THE    ORPHAN   ASYLUM   AT   STANZ    (1798-1799).- 
Up  to  1798  Pestalozzi  had  scarcely  found  the  occasion  to 
put  in  practice  his  principles  and  his  dreams.     The  Helvetic 
Revolution,  which  he  hailed  with  enthusiasm  as  the  signal  of 
a  social  regeneration  for  his  country,  finally  gave  him  the 
means  of  making  a  trial  of  his  theories,  which,  by  a  strange 
destiny,  had  been  applied  by  other  hands  before  having  been 
applied  by  his  own. 

The  Helvetic  government,  whose  sentiments  were  in  har- 
mony with  the  democratic  sentiments  of  Pestalozzi,  offered 
him  the  direction  of  a  normal  school.  But  he  declined,  in 
order  that  he  might  remain  a  teacher.  He  was  about  to  take 
charge  of  a  school,  the  plan  of  which  he  had  organized,  when 
events  called  him  to  direct  an  orphan  asylum  at  Stanz. 

495.  METHODS  FOLLOWED  AT  STANZ.  —  From  six  to  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  from  four  to  eight  in  the  after- 
noon, Pestalozzi  heard  the  lessons  of  his  pupils.     The  rest 


424  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

of  the  time  was  devoted  to  manual  labor.  Even  daring  the 
lesson,  the  child  at  Stanz  "drew,  wrote,  and  worked."  To 
establish  order  in  a  school  which  contained  eighty  pupils, 
Pestalozzi  had  the  idea  of  resorting  to  rhythm  ;  "  and  it  was 
found,"  he  says,  ';  that  the  rhythmical  pronunciation  increased 
the  impression  produced  by  the  lesson."  Having  to  do  with 
pupils  absolutely  ignorant,  he  kept  them  for  a  long  time  on 
the  elements ;  he  practised  them  on  the  first  elements  till 
they  had  mastered  them.  He  simplified  the  methods,  and 
sought  in  each  branch  of  instruction  a  point  of  departure 
adapted  to  the  nascent  faculties  of  the  child.  The  mode  of 
teaching  was  simultaneous.  All  the  pupils  repeated  in  a 
high  tone  of  voice  the  words  of  the  teacher ;  but  the  instruc- 
tion was  also  mutual :  — 

"  Children  instructed  children ;  they  themselves  tried  the 
experiment ;  all  I  did  was  to  suggest  it.  Here  again  I  obeyed 
necessity.  Not  having  a  single  assistant,  I  had  the  idea  of 
putting  one  of  the  most  advanced  pupils  between  two  others 
who  were  less  advanced." 

Reading  was  combined  with  writing.  Natural  history  and 
geography  were  taught  to  children  under  the  form  of  con- 
versational lessons. 

But  what  engrossed  Pestalozzi  above  all  else  was  to 
develop  the  moral  sentiments  and  the  interior  forces  of  the 
conscience.  He  wished  to  make  himself  loved  by  his  pupils, 
to  awaken  among  them,  in  their  daily  association,  sentiments 
of  fraternal  affection,  to  excite  the  conception  of  eat-li  virtue 
before  formulating  its  precept,  and  to  give  the  children  moral 
lessons  through  the  influence  of  nature  which  surrounded 
them  and  through  the  activity  which  was  imposed  on  them. 

Pestalozzi's  chimera,  in  the  organization  at  Stanz,  was  to 
transport  into  the  school  the  conditions  of  domestic  life,  — 
the  desire  to  be  a  father  to  a  hundred  children. 


PESTALOZZI.  425 

"  I  was  convinced  that  my  heart  would  change  the  condi-  \ 
tion  of  my  children  just  as  promptly  as  the  sun  of  spring 
would  reanimate  the  earth  benumbed  by  the  winter." 

"•  It  was  necessary  that  my  children  should  observe,  from 
dawn  to  evening,  at  every  moment  of  the  day,  upon  my  brow 
and  on  my  lips,  that  my  affections  were  fixed  on  them,  that 
their  happiness  was  my  happiness,  and  that  their  pleasures 
were  my  pleasures." 

"  I  was  everything  to  my  children.  I  was  alone  with  them 
from  morning  till  night.  .  .  .  Their  hands  were  in  my  hands. 
Their  eyes  were  fixed  on  my  eyes." 

496.  RESULTS  ACCOMPLISHED. — Without  plan,  without 
apparent  order ;  merely  by  the  action  and  incessant  com- 
munication of  his  ardent  soul  with  children  ignorant  and 
perverted  by  misery ;  reduced  to  his  own  resources  in  a 
house  where  he  was  himself  "  steward,  accountant,  footman, 
and  almost  servant  all  in  one,"  Pestalozzi  obtained  surpris- 
ing results. 

"  I  saw  at  Stauz,"  he  says,  "  the  power  of  the  human 
faculties.  .  .  .  My  pupils  developed  rapidly  ;  it  was  another 
race.  .  .  .  The  children  very  soon  felt  that  there  existed  in 
them  forces  which  they  did  not  know,  and  in  particular  they 
acquired  a  general  sentiment  of  order  and  beauty.  They 
were  self-conscious,  and  the  impression  of  weariness  which 
habitually  reigns  in  schools  vanished  like  a  shadow  from  my 
class-room.  They  willed,  they  had  power,  they  persevered, 
they  succeeded,  and  they  were  happy.  They  were  not 
scholars  who  were  learning,  but  children  who  felt  unknown 
forces  awakening  within  them,  and  who  understood  where 
these  forces  could  and  would  lead  them,  and  this  feeling 
gave  elevation  to  their  mind  and  heart." 

"It  is  out  of  the  folly  of  Stanz,"  says  Roger  de  Guimps, 


426  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

'•'  that  has  come  the  primary  school  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury." 

While  the  pupils  prospered,  the  master  fell  sick  of  over- 
work. When  the  events  of  the  war  closed  the  orphan 
asylum,  it  was  quite  time  for  the  health  of  Pestalozzi.  He 
raised  blood  and  was  at  the  limit  of  his  strength. 

497.  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  BURGDORF  (1799-1802).  —  As 
soon  as  he  had  recovered  his  health,  Pestalozzi  resumed  the 
course  of  his  experiments.  Not  without  difficulty  he  suc- 
ceeded in  having  entrusted  to  him  a  small  class  in  a  primary 
school  of  Burgdorf.  He  passed  for  an  ignoramus. 

"It  was  whispered  that  I  could  neither  write,  nor  compute, 
nor  even  read  decently."  Pestalozzi  does  not  defend  him- 
self against  the  charge,  but  acknowledges  his  incapacity,  and 
even  asserts  that  it  is  to  his  advantage. 

"My  incapacity  in  these  respects  was  certainly  an  indis- 
pensable condition  for  my  discovery  of  the  simplest  method 
of  teaching." 

What  troubled  him  most  in  the  school  at  Burgdorf  "  was 
that  it  was  subjected  to  rules."  "  Never  in  my  life  had  I 
borne  such  a  burden.  I  was  discouraged.  I  cringed  under 
the  routine  yoke  of  the  school." 

Nevertheless,  Pestalozzi  succeeded  admirably  in  his  little 
school.  Then  more  advanced  pupils  were  given  him,  but 
here  his  success  was  less.  He  always  proceeded  without  a 
plan,  and  he  gave  himself  great  trouble  in  obtaining  results 
that  he  might  have  attained  much  more  easily  with  a  little 
more  system.  Blunders,  irregularities,  and  whimsicalities 
were  ever  compromising  the  action  of  his  good  will.  To  be 
convinced  of  this,  it  suffices  to  read  the  books  which  he  pub- 
lished at  this  period,  and  in  particular  the  most  celebrated, 
of  which  we  shall  proceed  to  give  a  brief  analysis. 


PESTALOZZI.  I 

498.  How  GERTRUDE  TEACHES  HER  CHILDREN".  —  It  is 
under  this  title  that  iu  1801  Pestalozzi  published  an  exposi- 
tion of  his  doctrine.1  "It  is  the  mosi  important  and  the 
most  profound  of  all  his  pedagogical  writings,"  says  one  of 
his  biographers.  We  shall  not  dispute  this  ;  but  this  book 
also  proves  how  the  mind  of  Pestalozzi  was  inferior  to  his 
heart,  how  the  writer  was  of  less  worth  than  the  teacher. 
Composed  under  the  form  of  letters  addressed  to  Gessner, 
the  work  of  Pestalozzi  is  too  often  a  tissue  of  declamations, 
of  rambling  thoughts,  and  of  personal  grievances.  It  is  the 
work  of  a  brain  that  is  in  a  state  of  ferment,  and  of  a  heart 
that  is  overflowing.  The  thought  is  painfully  disentangled 
from  out  a  thousand  repetitions.  Why  need  we  be  aston- 
ished at  this  literary  incompetence  of  Pestalozzi  when  he 
himself  makes  the  following  confession:  "  For  thirty  years 
I  had  not  read  a  single  book  ;  I  could  not  longer  read  them." 

.499.  PESTALOZZI'S  STYLE.  — The  style  of  Pestalozzi  is  the 
very  man  himself  r  desultory,  obscure,  confused,  but  with 
sudden  flashes  and  brilliant  illuminations  in  which  the  warmth 
of  his  heart  is  exhibited.  There  are  also  too  many  compari- 
sons ;  the  imagery  overwhelms  the  idea.  Within  a  few 
pages  he  will  compare  himself,  in  succession,  "to  a  sailor, 
who,  having  lost  his  harpoon,  would  try  to  catch  a  whale 
with  a  hook,"  to  depict  the  disproportion  between  his 
resources  and  his  purpose  ;  then  to  n,  straw,  which  even  a 
cat  would  not  lay  hold  of,  to  tell  how  he  was  despised  ; 
to  an  owl,  to  express  his  isolation  ;  to  a  reed,  to  indicate 
his  feebleness ;  to  a  mouse  which  fears  a  cat,  to  characterize 
his  timidity. 

1  A  second  edition  appeared  in  the  lifetime  of  the  author,  in  1820,  with 
some  important  modifications.  The  French  translation  published  in  1882 
by  Dr.  Darin  was  made  from  the  first  edition. 


428  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

500.  ANALYSIS   OF  THE    GERTRUDE. — It  is   not   easy  to 
analyze  one  of  Pestalozzi's  books.      To  begin  with,  How 
Gertrude  teaches  her  Children  is  a  very  bad  title,  for  Gertrude 
is  not  once  mentioned  in  it.     This  proper  name  became  for 
Pestalozzi  an  allegorical  term  by  which  he  personifies  himself. 

The  first  three  letters  are  rather  autobiographical  memoirs 
than  an  exposition  of  doctrine.  Pestalozzi  here  relates  his 
first  experiments,  and  makes  us  acquainted  with  his  assist- 
ants at  Burgdorf,  —  Krtisi,  Tobler,  and  Buss.  In  the  letters 
which  follow,  the  author  attempts  to  set  forth  the  geiu-ral 
principles  of  his  method.  The  seventh  treats  of  language  ; 
the  eighth,  of  the  intuition  of  forms,  of  writing,  and  of 
drawing ;  the  ninth,  of  the  intuition  of  numbers  and  of  com- 
putation ;  the  tenth  and  twelfth,  of  intuition  in  general. 
For  Pestalozzi,  intuition  was,  as  we  know,  direct  and  ex- 
perimental perception,  either  in  the  domain  of  sense,  or  in 
the  interior  regions  of  the  consciousness.  Finally,  the  last 
letters  are  devoted  to  moral  and  religious  development. 

Without  designing  to  follow,  in  all  its  ramblings  and  in  all 
its  digressions,  the  mobile  thought  of  Pestalozzi,  we  shall 
gather  up  some  of  the  general  ideas  which  abound  in  this 
overcharged  and  badly  composed  work. 

501.  METHODS  SIMPLIFIED.  —  The  purpose  of  Pestalozzi 
was  indeed,  in  one  sense,  as  he  was  told   by  one   of   his 
friends,  to  mechanize  instruction.     He  wished,  in  fact,  to 
simplify  and  determine  methods  to  such  a  degree  that  they 
might  be  employed  by  the  most  ordinary  teacher,  and  by  the 
most  ignorant  father  and  mother.     In  a  word,  he  hoped  to 
organize  a  pedagogical  machine  so  well  set  up  that  it  could 
in  a  manner  rnn  alone. 

"  I  believe,"  he  says,  "  that  we  must  not  dream  of  making 
progress  in  the  instruction  of  the  people  as  long  as  we  have 


PESTALOZZI.  429 

not  found  the  forms  of  instruction  which  make  of  the 
teacher,  at  least  so  far  as  the  completion  of  the  elementary 
studies  is  concerned,  the  simple  mechanical  instrument  of  a 
method  which  owes  its  results  to  the  nature  of  its  processes, 
and  not  to  the  ability  of  the  one  who  uses  it.  I  assert  that 
a  school-book  has  no  value,  save  as  it  can  be  employed  by  a  I 
master  without  instruction  as  well  as  by  one  who  has  been 
taught." 

This  was  sheer  exaggeration,  and  was  putting  too  little 
value  on  the  personal  effort  and  merit  of  teachers.  On  this 
score,  it  would  be  useless  to  found  normal  schools.  Pesta- 
lozzi,  moreover,  has  given  in  his  own  person  a  striking 
contradiction  to  tins  singular  theory  ;  for  he  owed  his  success 
in  teaching  much  more  to  the  influence  of  his  living  speech, 
and  to  the  ardent  communication  of  the  passion  by  which  his 
heart  was  animated,  than  to  the  methodical  processes  which 
he  never  succeeded  in  combining  in  an  efficient  manner. 

502.  THE  SOCRATIC  METHOD. — Pestalozzi  recommends 
the  Socratic  method,  and  he  indicates  with  exactness  some  of 
the  conditions  necessary  for  the  emplo3'ment  of  that  method. 
He  first  observes  that  it  requires  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
uncommon  ability. 

"A  superficial  and  uncultivated  intelligence,"  he  says,  i 
"  does  not  sound  the  depths  whence  a  Socrates  made  spring  i 
up  intelligence  and  truth." 

Besides,  the  Socratic  method  can  be  employed  only  with 
pupils  who  already  have  some  instruction.  It  is  absolutely 
impracticable  with  children  who  lack  both  the  point  of  de- 
parture, that  is,  preliminary  notions,  and  the  means  of 
expressing  these  notions,  that  is,  a  knowledge  of  language. 
And  as  it  is  always  necessary  that  Pestalozzi's  thought 
should  wind  up  with  a  figure  of  speech,  he  adds :  — 


- 


430  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

' '  In  order  that  the  goshawk  and  the  eagle  may  plunder 
eggs  from  other  birds,  it  is  first  necessary  that  the  latter 
should  deposit  eggs  in  their  nests." 

503.  WORD,  FORM,  AND  NUMBER. — A  favorite   idea    of 
Pestalozzi,  which  remained  at  Yverdun,  as  at  Burgdorf,  the 
principle  of    his  exercises  in   teaching,  is  that  all  elemen- 
tary knowledge  can  and  should  be  related  to  three  princi- 
ples, —  word,  form,  and  number.     To  the  word  he  attached 
language,  to  form,  writing  and  drawing,   and  to   number, 
computation. 

"This  was,"  he  says,  "like  a  ray  of  light  in  my  re- 
searches, like  a  Deus  ex  machinal"  Nothing  justifies  such 
enthusiasm.  It  would  be  very  easy  to  show  that  Pestalozzi's 
classification,  besides  that  it  offers  no  practical  interest,  is 
•  not  justifiable  from  the  theoretical  point  of  view,  first  be- 
cause one  of  the  elements  of  his  trilogy,  the  word,  or  lan- 
guage, comprises  the  other  two ;  and  then  because  a  large 
part  of  knowledge,  for  example,  all  physical  qualities,  does  not 
permit  the  distinction  of  which  he  was  superstitiously  fond. 

504.  INTUITIVE  EXERCISES.  —What  is   of   more  value  is 
the  importance  which  Pestalozzi  ascribes  to  intuition.     An 
incident"  worthy  of  note  is  that  it  is  not  Pestalozzi  himself, 
but  one  of  the  children  of  his  school,  who  first  had  the  idea 
of  the  direct  observation  of  the  objects  which  serve  as  the 
text  for  the  lesson.     One  day  as,  according  to  his  custom,  he 
was   giving   his   pupils   a   long    description   of    what   they 
observed  in  a  drawing  where  a  window  was  represented,  he 
noticed  that  one  of  his  little  auditors,  instead  of  looking  at 
the  picture,  was  attentively  studying  the  real  window  of  the 
school -room. 

From  that  moment  Pestalozzi  put  aside  all  his  drawings, 
and  took  the  objects  themselves  for  subjects  of  observation. 


PESTALOZZI.  431 

"The  child,"  he  said,  "wishes  nothing  to  intervene  be- 
tween  nature  and  himself." 

Ramsauer,  a  pupil  at  Burgdorf,  has  described,  not  with- 
out some  inaccuracy  perhaps,  the  intuitive  exercises  which 
Pestalozzi  offered  to  his  pupils  :  — 

"  The  exercises  in  language  were  the  best  we  had,  espe- 
cially those  which  had  reference  to  the  wainscoting  of  the 
school-room.  He  spent  whole  hours  before  that  wainscot- 
ing, very  old  and  torn,  busy  in  examining  the  holes  and 
rents,  with  respect  to  number,  form,  position,  and  color,  and 
in  formulating  our  observations  in  sentences  more  or  less  de- 
veloped. Then  Pestalozzi  would  ask  us,  Boys,  what  do  you 
see?  (He  never  mentioned  the  girls.) 

Pupil :  I  see  a  hole  in  the  wainscoting. 

Pestalozzi :  Very  well ;  repeat  after  me  :  — 
I  see  a  hole  in  the  wainscoting. 
I  see  a  large  hole  in  the  wainscoting. 
Through  the  hole  I  see  the  wall,  etc.,  etc." 

505.  THE  BOOK  FOR  MOTHERS.  — In  1803  Pestalozzi  pub- 
lished a  work  on  elemental^  instruction,  which  remained  un- 
finished, entitled  The  Book  for  Mothers.  This  was  another 
Orbift  Pictus  without  pictures.  Pestalozzi's  intention  was  to 
introduce  the  child  to  a  knowledge  of  the  objects  of  nature 
or  of  art  which  fall  under  his  observation.  In  this  he  tar- 
ried too  long  over  the  description  of  the  organs  of  the  body 
and  of  their  functions.  A  French  critic,  Dussault,  said, 
with  reference  to  this  :  — 

"Pestalozzi  gives  himself  much  trouble  to  teach  children 
that  their  nose  is  in  the  middle  of  their  face."  In  his  anxiety 
to  be  simple  and  elementary,  Pestalozzi  often  succeeds  in 
reality  in  making  instruction  puerile.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Pere  GSrard  complains  that  the  exercises  in  language 


432  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

which  compose  The  Book  for  Mothers,  "•  really  very  well  ar- 
ranged, are  also  very  dry  and  monotonous." 

506.  A  Swiss  TEACHER  IN  1793.  —  To  form  a  just  esti- 
mate of  the  efforts  of  Pestalozzi  and  his  assistants,  we  must 
take  into  account  the  wretched  state  of  instruction  at  the 
period  when  they  attempted  to  reform  the  methods  of  teach- 
ing. Kriisi,  Pestalozzi's  first  assistant,  one  of  those  who 
were  perhaps  the  nearest  his  heart,  has  himself  related  how 
he  became  a  teacher.  He  was  eighteen,  and  till  then  his 
only  employment  had  been  that  of  a  peddler  for  his  father. 
One  day,  as  he  was  going  about  his  business  with  a  heavy 
load  of  merchandise  on  his  shoulders,  he  meets  on  the  roud  a 
revenue  officer  of  the  State,  and  they  enter  into  conversation. 
"  Do  you  know,"  said  the  officer,  "  that  the  teacher  of  Gais 
is  about  to  leave  his  school  ?  Would  you  not  like  to  succeed 
him  ?  —  It  is  not  a  question  of  what  I  would  like  ;  a  school- 
master should  have  knowledge,  in  which  I  am  absolutely  lack- 
ing. —  What  a  school-master  can  and  should  know  with  us, 
you  might  easily  learn  at  your  age."  —  Kriisi  reflected,  went 
to  work,  and  copied  more  than  a  hundred  times  a  specimen 
of  writing  which  he  had  procured  ;  and  be  declares  that  this 
was  his  only  preparation.  He  registered  for  examination. 
The  da}-  for  the  trial  arrived. 

"  There  were  but  two  competitors  of  us,"  he  says.  "  The 
principal  test  consisted  in  writing  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  to 
this  I  gave  my  closest  attention.  I  had  observed  that  in 
German,  use  was  made  of  capital  letters  ;  but  I  did  not  know 
the  rule  for  their  use,  and  took  them  for  ornaments.  So  I 
distributed  mine  in  a  symmetrical  manner,  so  that  some  were 
found  even  in  the  middle  of  words.  In  fact,  neither  of  us 
knew  anything. 

"  When  the  examination  had  been  estimated,  I  was  sum- 


PESTALOZZI.  433 

moued,  and  Captain  Schoepfer  informed  me  that  the  exam- 
iners had  found  us  both  deficient ;  that  my  competitor  read 
the  better,  but  that  I  excelled  him  in  writing ;  .  .  .  that, 
besides,  my  apartment,  being  larger  than  that  of  the  other 
candidate,  was  better  fitted  for  holding  a  school,  and,  finally, 
that  I  was  elected  to  the  vacant  place." 

Is  it  not  well  to  be  indulgent  to  teachers  whom  we  meet  on 
the  highway,  who  scarcely  know  how  to  write,  and  whom  a 
captain  commissions? 

507.  THE  INSTITUTE  AT  BURGDOKF  (1802). — When  Pes- 
talozzi  published  the  Gertrude  and  TJie  Book  for  Mothers,  he 
was  not  simply  a  school-master  at  Burgdorf ;  he  had  taken 
charge  of  an  institute,  that  is,  of  a  boardiug-school  of  higher 
primary   instruction.      There   also   he   applied   the   natural 
method,  "  which  makes  the  child  proceed  from  his  own  intui- 
tions, and  leads  him  by  degrees,  and  through  his  own  efforts, 
to  abstract  ideas."     The  institute  succeeded.     The  pupils  of 
Burgdorf  were  distinguished  especially  by  their  skill  in  draw- 
ing and  in  mental  arithmetic.     Visitors  were  struck  with  their 
air  of  cheerfulness.     Singing  and  gymnastics  were  held  in 
honor,  and  also  exercises  on  natural  history,  learned  in  the 
open  field,  and  during  walks.     Mildness  and  liberty  charac- 
terized the  internal  management.     "It  is  not  a  school  that 
you  have  here,"  said  a  visitor,  "  but  a  family  ! " 

508.  JOURNEY  TO  PARIS.  — It  was  at  this  period  that  Pes- 
talozzi  made  a  journey  to  Paris,  as  a  member  of  the  consulta 
called  by  Bonaparte  to  decide  the  fate  of  Switzerland.     He 
hoped  to  take  advantage  of  his  stay  in  France  to  disseminate 
his  pedagogical  ideas.     But  Bonaparte  refused  to  see  him, 
saying  that  he  had  something  else  to  do  besides  discussing 
questions  of  a  b  c.     Monge,  the  founder  of  the  Polytechnic 
School,  was  more  cordial,  and  kindly  listened  to  the  explana- 


434  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tions  of  the  Swiss  pedagogue.  Bat  he  concluded  by  saying, 
"  It  is  too  much  for  us  !  "  More  disdainful  still,  Talleyrand 
had  said,  "  It  is  too  much  for  the  people !  " 

On  the  other  hand,  at  the  same  period,  the  philosopher 
Maine  de  Biran,  then  sub-prefect  at  Bergerac,  called  a  disciple 
of  Pestalozzi,  Barraud,  to  found  schools  in  the  department  of 
Dordogne,  and  he  encouraged  with  all  his  influence  the  appli- 
cation of  the  Pestalozzian  method. 

509.  THE  INSTITUTE  AT  YVERDUN  (1805-1825).  — In  1803 
Pestalozzi  was  obliged  to  leave  the  castle  of  Burgdorf .     The 
Swiss  government  gave  him   in  exchange   the   convent  of 
Mu'nchen-Buchsee.      Pestalozzi   transferred  his   institute  to 
this  place,  but  only  for  a  little  time.     In  1805  he  established 
himself  at  Yverdun,  at  the  foot  of  Lake  Neufchatel,  in  French 
Switzerland;  and  here,  with  the  aid  of  several  of  his  col- 
ieagues,  he  developed  his  methods  anew,  with  brilliant  success 
at  first,  but  afterwards  through  all  sorts  of  vicissitudes,  diffi- 
culties, and  miseries. 

The  institute  at  Yverdnn  was  rather  a  school  of  secondary 
instruction,  devoted  to  the  middle  classes,  than  a  primary 
school  proper.  Pupils  poured  in  from  all  sides.  The  char- 
acter of  the  studies,  however,  was  poorly  defined,  and  Pesta- 
lozzi found  himself  somewhat  out  of  his  element  in  his  new 
institution,  since  he  excelled  only  in  elementary  methods  and 
in  the  education  of  little  children. 

510.  SUCCESS  OF  THE  INSTITUTE.  —  Numerous  visitors  be- 
took themselves  to  Yverdun,  some  through  simple  love  of 
strolling.    The  institute  of  Yverdun  made  a  part,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  curiosities  of  Switzerland.     People  visited  Pestalozzi 
as  they  went  to  see  a  lake  or  a  glacier.     As  soon  as  notice 
was  given  of  the  arrival  of  a  distinguished  personage,  Pesta- 
lozzi  summoned   one   of  his  best    masters,   Ramsauer    or 
Schmid. 


PESTALOZZI.  435 

"  Take  your  best  pupils,"  he  said,  "  aud  show  the  Prince 
what  we  are  doing.  He  has  numerous  serfs,  and  when  he  is 
convinced,  he  will  have  them  instructed." 

These  frequent  exhibitions  entailed  a  great  loss  of  time. 
Disorder  reigned  in  the  instruction.  The  young  masters 
whom  Pestalozzi  had  attached  to  his  fortunes  were  over- 
whelmed with  work,  and  could  not  give  sufficient  attention  to 
the  preparation  of  their  lessons.  Pestalozzi  was  growing  old, 
and  did  not  succeed  in  completing  his  methods. 

511.  THE  TENTATIVES  OF  PESTALOZZI. — The  teaching  of 
Pestalozzi  was  in  reality  but  a  long  groping,  an  experiment 
ceaselessly  renewed.  Do  not  require  of  him  articulate  ideas, 
and  methods  definitely  established.  Always  on  the  alert,  and 
always  in  quest  of  something  better,  his  admirable  pedagogic 
instinct  never  came  to  full  satisfaction.  His  merit  was  that 
he  was  always  on  the  search  for  truth.  His  theories  almost 
always  followed,  rather  than  preceded,  his  experiments.  A 
man  of  intuition  rather  than  of  reasoning,  he  acknowledges 
that  he  went  forward  without  considering  what  he  was  doing. 
He  had  the  merit  of  making  many  innovations,  but  he  was 
wrong  in  taking  counsel  of  no  one  but  himself,  and  of  his 
personal  feelings.  "We  ought  to  read  nothing,"  he  said; 
"  we  ought  to  discover  everything."  Pestalozzi  never  knew 
how  to  profit  by  the  experience  of  others. 

He  never  arrived  at  complete  precision  in  the  establish- 
ment of  his  methods.  He  complained  of  not  being  under- 
stood, and  he  was  not  in  fact.  One  of  his  pupils  at  Yverdun, 
Vulliemin,  thus  expresses  himself  :  — 

"  That  which  was  called,  not  without  pretense,  the  method 
of  Pestalozzi  was  an  enigma  for  us.  Tt  was  for  our  teachers 
themselves.  Each  of  them  interpreted  the  doctrine  of  the 
master  in  his  own  way  ;  but  we  were  still  far  from  the  time 


436  THE    HISTOIiY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

when  these  divergencies  engendered  discord ;  when  our 
principal  teachers,  after  each  had  given  out  that  he  alone 
had  comprehended  Pestalozzi,  ended  by  asserting  that  Pes- 
talozzi  himself  was  not  understood ;  that  he  had  not  been 
understood  except  by  Schmid,  said  Schmid,  and  by  Niederer. 
said  Niederer." 

512.  METHODS  AT  YVERDUN.  —  The  writer  whom  we  have 
just  quoted  gives  us  valuable  information  on  the  methods 
which  were  in  use  at  Yverdun  :  — 

"  Instruction  was  addressed  to  the  intelligence  rather  than 
'/to  the  memory.  (Attempt,  "aid  ^Pfrfttft^yrH^  IH>  '">Hengnes; . 
\  to  develop  the  child,  and  not  to  train  him  as  one  trains  a 
Lfog-T      </'  ';£ 

""X/anguage  was  taught  us  by  the  aid  of  intuition  ;  we 
learned  to  see  correctly,  and  through  this  very  process  to 
form  for  ourselves  a  correct  idea  of  the  relations  of  things. 
What  we  had  conceived  clearl}'  we  had  no  difficulty  in 
expressing  clearlj'." 

"The  first  elements  of  geography  were  taught  us  on  the 
spot.  .  .  .  Then  we  reproduced  in  relief  with  clay  the  valley 
of  which  we  had  just  made  a  study." 

"We  were  made  to  invent  geometry  by  having  marked 
out  for  us  the  end  to  reach,  and  by  being  put  on  the  route. 
The  same  course  was  followed  in  arithmetic  ;  our  computa- 
tions were  made  in  the  head  and  viva  voce,  without  the  aid 
of  paper." 

513.  DECADENCE   OF  THE  INSTITUTE. — Yverdun   enjoyed 
an  extraordinary  notoriety  for  some  years.     But  little  by 
little  the  faults  of  the  method  became  apparent.     Internal 
discords    and    the    misunderstanding    of    Pestalozzi's    col- 
leagues, of  Niederer,  "  the  philosopher  of  the  method,"  and 
of  Schmid,  the  mathematician,  hastened  the  decadence  of 


PESTALOZZI.  437 

an  establishment  in  which  order  and  discipline  had  never 
reigned.  Pestalozzi  was  content  with  being  the  spur  of  the 
institute.  He  became  more  and  more  unfit  for  practical 
affairs.  He  allowed  all  libert}'  to  his  assistants,  and  also  to 
his  pupils.  At  Yverdun  the  pupils  addressed  their  teachers 
in  familiar  style.  The  touching  fiction  of  paternity  trans- 
ported into  the  school,  which  was  successful  with  Pestalozzi 
in  his  first  experience  in  teaching,  and  with  a  small  number 
of  pupils,  was  no  longer  practicable  at  Yverdun,  with  a  mass 
of  pupils  of  every  age  and  of  every  disposition. 

514.  JUDGMENT  OF  FERE  GIRARD. —  In  1809  the  Pere 
Girard1  was  commissioned  by  the  Swiss  government  to 
inspect  the  institute.  The  result  was  not  favorable,  though 
Girard  acknowledges  that  he  conceived  the  idea  of  his  own 
method  from  studying  at  first  hand  that  of  Pestalozzi. 

The  principal  criticism  of  Girard  bears  on  the  abuse  of 
mathematics,  which,  under  the  influence  of  Schmid,  became 
in  fact  more  and  more  the  principal  occupation  of  teachers 
and  pupils. 

"I  made  the  remark,"  he  says,  "to  my  old  friend  Pes- 
talozzi, that  the  mathematics  exercised  an  unjustifiable  sway 
in  his  establishment,  and  that  I  feared  the  results  of  this  on 
the  education  that  was  given.  Whereupon  he  replied  to  me 
with  spirit,  as  was  his  manner :  '  This  is  because  I  wish  my 
children  to  believe  nothing  which  cannot  be  demonstrated  as 
clearly  to  them  as  that  two  and  two  make  four.'  My  reply 
was  in  the  same  strain  :  '  In  that  case,  if  I  had  thirty  sons, 
I  would  not  entrust  one  of  them  to  you,  for  it  would  be 
impossible  for  you  to  demonstrate  to  him,  as  you  can  that 
two  and  two  make  four,  that  I  am  his  father,  and  that  I 
have  a  right  to  his  obedience.'  " 

1  See  the  following  chapter. 


<l 


438  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  evident  that  Pestalozzi  was  deviating  from  his  own 
inclinations.  The  general  character  of  his  pedagogy  is  in 
fact  to  avoid  abstraction,  and  in  all  things  to  aim  at  concrete 
and  living  intuition.  Even  in  religion,  he  deliberately 
excluded  dogmatic  teaching,  precise  and  literal  form,  and 
sought  only  to  awaken  in  the  soul  a  religious  sentiment, 
sincere  and  profound.  The  Pere  Girard  had  remarked  to 
him  that  the  religious  instruction  of  his  pupils  was  vague 
and  indeterminate,  and  that  their  aspirations  lacked  the 
doctrinal  form.  "The  form,"  replied  Pestalozzi,  "I  am 
still  looking  for  it ! " 

515.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  PESTALOZZI.  —  Disheartened  by 
the  decadence  of  his  institute,  Pestalozzi  left  Yverdun  in 
1824,  and  sought  a  retreat  at  Neuhof,  on  the  farm  where  he 
had  tried  his  first  experiments  in  popular  education.     It  is 
here  that  he  wrote  his  last  two  works, —  The  Swan's  Song  and 
My  Destinies.     January  25,  1827,  he  was  taken  to  Brugg  to 
consult  a  physician.     He  died  there  February  17;  and  two 
days  after  he  was  buried  at  Birr.    It  is  there  that  the  Canton 
of  Argovia  erected  a  monument  to  him  in  1846,  with  the 
following  inscription :  — 

"  Here  lies  Henry  Pestalozzi,  bora  at  Zurich,  January  12, 
1746,  died  at  Brugg,  February  17,  1827,  savior  of  the  poor 
at  Neuhof,  preacher  of  the  people  in  Leonard  and  Gertrude, 
father  of  orphans  at  Stanz,  founder  of  the  new  people's 
school  at  Burgdorf  and  at  Munchen-Buchsee,  educator  of 
humanity  at  Yverdun,  man,  Christian,  citizen :  everything 
for  others,  nothing  for  himself.  Blessed  be  his  name." 

516.  ESSENTIAL  PRINCIPLES. — Pestalozzi  never  took  th? 
trouble  to  formulate  the  essential  principles  of  his  pedagogy. 
Incapable  of   all   labor  in  abstract  reflection,  he  borrowed 
from   his   friends,   on   every  possible   occasion,  the  logical 


PESTALOZZI.  439 

exposition  of  his  own  methods.  In  his  first  letter  to  Gess- 
uer,  he  is  only  too  happy  to  reproduce  the  observations  of 
the  philanthropist  Fischer,  who  distinguished  five  essential 
principles  in  his  system  :  — 

1.  To  give  the  mind  an  intensive  culture,  and  not  simply 
extensive :  to  form  the  mind,  and  not  to  content  one's  self 
with  furnishing  it ; 

2.  To  connect  all  instruction  with  the  study  of  language  ; 

3.  To  furnish  the  mind  for  all  its  operations  with  funda- 
mental data,  mother  ideas ; 

4.  To  simplify  the  mechanism  of  instruction  and  study ; 

5.  To  popularize  science. 

On  several  points,  indeed,  Pestalozzi  calls  in  question  the 
translation  which  Fischer  has  given  of  his  thought ;  but, 
notwithstanding  these  reservations,  powerless  to  find  a  more 
exact  formula,  he  accepts  as  a  finality  this  interpretation  of 
his  doctrine. 

Later,  another  witness  of  the  life  of  Pestalozzi,  Morf ,  also 
condensed  into  a  few  maxims  the  pedagogy  of  the  great 
teacher :  — 

1.  Intuition  is  the  basis  of  instruction; 

2.  Language  ought  to  be  associated  with  intuition  ; 

3.  The  time  to  learn  is  not  that  of  judging  and  of  criti- 
cising ; 

4.  In  each  branch,  instruction   ought   to  begin  with  the 
simplest  elements,  and  to  progress  by  degrees  while  follow- 
ing the  development  of  the  child,  that  is  to  say,  through  a 
series  of  steps  psychologically  connected ; 

5.  We  should  dwell  long  enough  on  each  part  of  the  in- 
struction for  the  pupil  to  gain  a  complete  mastery  of  it ; 

G.    Instruction    ought    to    follow    the    order    of    natural 
development,  and  not  that  of  synthetic  exposition; 
7.    The  individuality  of  the  child  is  sacred ; 


440  THE  HISTOliY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

r^""  8.  The  principal  end  of  elementary  instruction  is  not  to 
/  cause  the  child  to  acquire  knowledge  and  talents,  but  to 
' —  develop  and  increase  the  forces  of  his  intelligence  ; 

9.  To  wisdom  there  must  be  joined  power;  to  theoretical 
knowledge,  practical  skill ; 

10.  The  relations  between  master  and  pupil  ought  to  be 
based  on  love ; 

11.  Instruction  proper  ought  to  be  made  subordinate  to 
the  higher  purpose  of  education. 

Each  one  of  these  aphorisms  would  need  a  long  com- 
mentary. It  is  sufficient,  however,  to  study  them  in  the  aggre- 
gate, in  order  to  form  an  almost  exact  idea  of  that  truly 
humane  pedagogy  which  reposes  on  psychological  principles. 

Kru'si  could  say  of  his  master:  "With  respect  to  the 
:  ordinary  knowledge  and  practices  of  the  school,  Pestalozzi 
was  far  below  a  good  village  magister;  but  he  possessed 
something  infinitely  superior  to  that  which  can  be  given  by  a 
/  course  of  instruction,  whatever  it  may  be.  He  knew  that 
which  remains  concealed  from  a  great  number  of  teachers,  — 
the  human  spirit  and  the  laws  of  its  development  and  culture, 
the  human  heart  and  the  means  of  vivifying  it  and  ennobling 
-it." 

517.  PEDAGOGICAL  PROCESSES.  — The  pedagogy  of  Pesta- 
lozzi is  no  less  valid  in  its  processes  than  in  its  principles. 
Without  presuming  to  enumerate  everything,  we  will  indicate 
succinctly  some  of  the  scholastic  practices  which  he  employed 
and  recommended :  — 

The  child  should  know  how  to  speak  before  learning  to 
read. 

For  reading,  use  should  be  made  of  movable  letters  glued 
on  pasteboard.  Before  writing,  the  pupil  should  draw. 
The  first  exercises  in  writing  should  be  upon  slates. 


PESTALOZZI.  441 

In  the  study  of  language,  the  evolution  of  nature  should 
be  followed,  first  studying  nouns,  then  qualificatives,  and 
finally  propositions. 

The  elements  of  computation  shall  be  taught  by  the  aid  of 
material  objects  taken  as  units,  or  at  least  by  means  of  strokes   / 
drawn  on  a   board.     Oral   computation   shall   be   the  most 
employed. 

The  pupil  ought,  in  order  to  form  an  accurate  and  exact 
idea  of  numbers,  to  conceive  them  always  as  a  collection  of 
strokes  or  of  concrete  things,  and  not  as  abstract  figures. 
A  small  table  divided  into  squares  in  which  points  are  rep- 
resented, serves  to  teach  addition,  subtraction,  multiplica- 
tion, and  division. 

There  was  neither  book  nor  copy-book  in  the  schools  of 
Burgdorf. 

The  children  had  nothing  to  learn  by  heart.  They  had  to 
repeat  all  at  once  and  in  accord  the  instructions  of  the 
master.  Each  lesson  lasted  but  an  hour,  and  was  followed 
b}7  a  short  interval  devoted  to  recreation. 

Manual  labor,  making  paper  boxes,  working  in  the  garden, 
gymnastics,  were    associated  with  mental  labor.     The   last      I 
hour  of  each  day  was  devoted  to  optional  labor.     The  pupils 
said,  "  We  are  working  for  cm-selves. " 

A  few  hours  a  week  were  devoted  to  military  exercises. 

Surely  everything  is  not  to  be  commended  in  the  processes 
which  we  have  just  indicated.  It  is  not  necessary,  for  ox- 
ample,  that  the  child  conceive,  when  he  computes,  the  con- 
tent of  numbers,  and  Pestalozzi  sometimes  make.s  an  abuse 
of  sense  intuition.  He  introduces  analysis,  and  an  analysis 
too  subtile  and  too  minute,  into  studies  where  nature  alone 
does  her  work.  "  My  method,"  he  said,  "  is  but  a  refinement 
of  the  processes  of  nature."  He  refines  too  much. 


442  THE    HISTORY    Ol^    PEDAGOGY. 

518.  PESTALOZZI  AND  ROUSSEAU.  —  Pestalozzi  has  often 
acknowledged  what  he  owed  to  Ilousseau.     '-My  chimerical 
and  unpractical  spirit  was  taken,"  he  said,  "with  that  chimer- 
ical and  impracticable  book.  .  .  .  The  system  of  liberty  ideally 
established  by  Rousseau,  excited  in  me  an  infinite  longing 
for  a  wider  and  more  bounteous  sphere  of  activity." 

The  great  superiority  of  Pestalozzi  over  Rousseau  is  that 
he  worked  for  the  people,  —  that  he  applied  to  a  great  num- 
ber of  children  the  principles  which  Rousseau  embodied  only 
in  an  individual  and  privileged  education.  £mile,  after  all, 
is  an  aristocrat.  He  is  rich,  and  of  good  ancestry  ;  and  is 
endowed  with  all  the  gifts  of  nature  and  fortune.  Real  pu- 
pils do  not  offer,  in  general,  to  the  action  of  teachers,  mate- 
rial as  docile  and  complaisant.  Pestalozzi  had  to  do  only 
with  children  of  the  common  people,  who  have  everything  to 
learn  at  school,  because  they  have  found  at  home,  with  busy 
or  careless  parents,  neither  encouragement  nor  example,  — 
because  their  early  years  have  been  only  a  long  intellectual 
slumber.  For  these  benumbed  natures,  many  exercises  are 
necessary  which  would  properly  be  regarded  as  useless  if  it 
were  a  question  of  instructing  children  of  another  condition. 
Before  condemning,  before  ridiculing,  the  trifling  practices  of 
Pestalozzi,  and  of  teachers  of  the  same  school,  we  should 
consider  the  use  to  which  these  processes  were  applied.  The 
real  organizer  of  the  education  of  childhood  and  of  the  peo- 
ple, Pestalozzi  has  a  right  to  the  plaudits  of  all  those  who 
are  interested  in  the  future  of  the  masses  of  the  people. 

519.  CONCLUSION. — "We  should  not  flatter  ourselves  that 
merely  by  means  of  an  analysis  of  Pestalozzi's  methods,  we 
can  comprehend  the  service  of  a  man  who  excelled  in  the 
warmth  of  his  charity,  in  his  ardor  of  devotion  and  of  propa- 
gandism,  and  in  I  know  not  what  that  makes  a  grand  per- 


PESTALOZZI.  443 

sonality,  more  than  by  the  clearness  and  the  exactness  of 
his  theories.  It  is  somewhat  with  Pestalozzi  as  with  those 
great  actors  who  carry  with  them  to  their  tomb  a  part  of  the 
secret  of  their  art. 

He  was  especially  great  in  heart  and  in  love.  To  read 
some  of  his  writings,  we  would  sometimes  be  tempted  to  say 
that  his  intellect  was  far  inferior  to  the  expectation  excited 
by  his  name  ;  but  what  a  splendid  revenge  he  takes  in  the 
domain  of  sentiment ! 

He  passionately  loved  the  people.  He  knew  their  suffer- 
ings, and  nothing  turned  him  from  his  anxiety  to  cure  them. 
In  the  presence  of  a  beautiful  landscape,  he  thought  less  of 
the  charming  scene  that  was  displayed  before  his  eyes  than 
of  the  poor  people  who,  under  those  splendors  of  nature,  led 
a  life  of  misery. 

That  which  assures  him  an  immortal  glory  is  the  high  pur- 
pose that  he  set  before  himself,  —  his  ardor  to  regenerate 
humanity  through  instruction.  Of  what  consequence  is  it 
that  the  results  obtained  were  so  disproportionate  to  his 
efforts,  and  that  he  could  say,  u  The  contrast  between  what 
I  would  and  what  I  could  is  so  great  that  it  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed"? Even  the  French  Revolution  did  not  succeed  in 
the  matter  of  instruction,  in  making  its  works  commensurate 
with  its  aspirations. 

The  love  and  the  admiration  of  all  the  friends  of  instruction 
are  forever  secured  to  Pestalozzi.  He  was  the  most  sugges- 
tive, the  most  stimulating,  of  modern  educators.  If  it  was 
not  given  him  to  act  sufficiently  on  French  pedngogy,  he  was 
in  Germany  the  great  inspirer  of  reform  in  popular  education. 
While  he  was  despised  by  Bonaparte,  he  obtained,  in  1802, 
from  the  philosopher  Fichte,  this  fine  compliment,  "It  is 
from  the  institute  of  Pestalozzi  that  I  expect  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  German  nation." 


444  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAG.OGY.. 

.' 


[520.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  Inveniam  warn  aut ;•  *  i 
faciam.  To  know  the  end  is  to  find  the  way  ;  and  to  be  pos- 
sessed of  an  impulse  to  reach  an  end  is  to  make  a  way. 
There  are  thus  two  categories  of  educational  reformers. 
Some  see  a  goal  by  the  light  of  reason  and  reflection,  and 
then  lay  out  a  logical  route  to  it  which  they  may  or  may  not 
traverse,  but  which  some  one  will  ultimately  traverse. 
Others  are  dominated  by  an  intense  feeling,  and  grope  their 
uncertain  way  towards  a  goal  whose  outline  and  position  are 
only  dimly  discerned  through  the  mists  of  emotion.  With 
some,  the  motive  is  intellectual,  with  others,  it  is  emotional ; 
and  in  their  higher  manifestations  these  endowments  are  mu- 
tually exclusive. 

2.  Pestalozzi  belongs  pre-eminently  to  the  emotional  re- 
formers.    He  felt  intensely,  but  he  saw  vaguely.     His  im- 
pulses were  the  highest  and  the  noblest  that  can  animate  the 
human  soul,  but  at  every  stage  in  his  career  his  success  was 
compromised  by  his  inability  to  see  things  in  their  normal 
relations   and   proportions.      Conscious   of  his   inability  to 
frame  a  rational  defence  of  his  system,  he  was  glad  to  bor- 
row philosophic  insight  from  abroad  ;  but  he  could  not  live 
with  colleagues  who  would  test  the  logic  of  his  methods. 

3.  Tested  by  the  simplest  rules  of  order,  symmetry,  and 
economy,  the  schools  organized  by  Pestalozzi  were  failures  ; 
but  tested  by  the  exalted  humanity,  the  heroic  devotion,  and 
self-sacrifice  of  their  founder,  and  by  the  new  life  which, 
through  his  example,  was  henceforth  to  animate  the  teaching 
profession,  his  schools  were  successful  beyond  all  precedent. 
Judged  by  modern  standnrds,  Pestalozzi  was  a  poor  teacher, 
but  an  unsurpassed  educator. 

4.  The  conception  which  the  humanitarian  warmth  of  Pes- 
talozzi's  nature  converted  into  a  motive,  was  that  true  edu- 
tion  is  a  growth,  the  outward  evolution  of  an  inward  life. 


PESTALOZZI.  445 

The  conception  itself  was  as  old  as  David  and  Socrates,  but    I 
it  had  ceased  to  have  the  power  of  a  living  truth. 

5.    The  history  of  human  thought  shows  that  there  has 
ever  been  a  tendency  to  separate  form  from  content,  or  letter 
from  spirit,  and  as  constant  a  predilection  for  form  or  letter, 
as  distinguished  from  content  or  spirit ;  and  the  essential  \ 
work  of  reform  has  consisted  in  reanimation.    This  illustrates    ' 
and  defines  Pestalozzi's  mission  as  an  educator.     The  story 
of  his  devotion  and  suffering  is  the  most  pathetic  in  the  his- 
tory of  education ,  and  it  should  be  unnecessary  to  repeat  the 
lesson  that  was  taught  at  such  cost.] 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

TFIE   SUCCESSORS  OF   PESTALOZZI.  —  FECEBEL   AND   THE 
PERE   GIRARD. 

THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY;  FRCEBEL  (1782-1852); 
YOUTH  OF  FRCEBEL;  DIFFERENT  EMPLOYMENTS;  CALL  TO  TEACH; 
FRCEBEL  AND  PESTALOZZI  J  TREATISE  ON  THE  SPHERICAL  J  NEW 
STUDIES;  INSTITUTE  OF  KEILHAU;  THE  EDUCATION  OF  MAN; 
ANALYSIS  OF  THAT  WORK  ;  LOVE  FOR  CHILDREN  ;  UNITY  OF  EDU- 
CATION J  DIFFERENT  STAGES  IN  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAX  ; 
NATURALISM  OF  FRCEBEL  J  NEW  EXPERIMENTS  IN  TEACHING;  KIN- 
DERGARTENS J  ORIGIN  OF  THE  KINDERGARTENS  ;  THE  GIFTS  OF 
FRCEBEL;  APPEAL  TO  THE  INSTINCTS  OF  THE  CHILD;  IMPORTANCE 
OF  SPORTS;  PRINCIPAL  NEEDS  OF  THE  CHILD;  FAULTS  IN  FRCEBEL'S 
METHOD;  THE  LAST  ESTABLISHMENTS  OF  FRCEBEL;  FRCEBEL  AND 
DIESTERWEG;  POPULARITY  OF  FRCEBEL;  THE  PERE  GIRARD  (1765- 
1850);  LIFE  OF  THE  PERE  GIRARD;  PLAN  OF  EDUCATION  FOR  HEL- 
VETIA; LAST  YEARS  OF  THE  PERE  GIRARD;  TEACHING  OF  THE 
MOTHER  TONGUE;  GRAMMAR  OF  IDEAS;  DISCREET  USE  OF  RULI:*; 
EDUCATIVE  COURSE  IN  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE  ;  ANALYSIS  OF  THAT 
WORK  ;  MORAL  ARITHMETIC  J  MORAL  GEOGRAPHY  ;  INFLUENCE  OF 
GIRARD;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


521.  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY.  — 
Pestalozzi  really  belongs  to  our  century  by  the  close  of  his 
career,  and  especially  by  the  posthumous  glory  of  his  name. 
"With  Froebel  and  the  Pere  Girard,  we  enter  completely 
upon  the  nineteenth  century  ;  both,  in  different  degrees  and 
with  characteristics  of  their  own,  continue  the  work  of 
Pestalozzi. 


THE    SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  447 

522.  FR<EBEL  (1782-1852). —  It  may  be  said  of  Frcebel 
as  of  Pestalozzi,  that  in  France  at  least,  he  is  more  praised 
than  known,  more  celebrated  than  studied.     We  have  been 
tardy  in  speaking  of  him,  — it  is  scarcely  twenty  years  since  ; 
but  it  seems  that  our  admiration  has  sought  to  atone  for  the 
slowness  of  its  manifestation  by  its  vivacity  and  its  ardor. 
The  name  of  the  founder  of  Kindergartens  has  become  almost 
popular,  while  his  writings  have  remained  almost  unknown.  _ 

An  impartial  and  thorough  study  of  Froebel's  work  will 
abate  rather  than  encourage  this  excessive  infatuation  and 
this  somewhat  artificial  enthusiasm.  Assuredly,  Froebel 
had  grand  qualities  as  a  teacher ;  but  he  lacked  a  profound 
classical  culture  and  also  the  sense  of  proportion.  Like 
most  of  the  Germans  of  this  century,  he  has  ventured  on  the 
conceptions  of  a  nebulous  philosophy,  and  following  the 
steps  of  Hegel,  he  has  too  often  deserted  the  route  of  obser- 
vation and  experiment,  to  strike  out  into  metaphysical  diva- 
gations. Frcebel's  imagination  magnifies  and  distorts  every- 
thing. He  cannot  see  objects  as  they  are,  but  lends  them 
a  symbolical  meaning,  and  wanders  off  into  transcendental 
and  obscure  considerations.  But  his  practical  work  is  worth 
more  than  his  writings,  and  he  cannot  be  denied  the  glory 
of  having  been  a  bold  and  happy  innovator  in  the  field  of 
early  education. 

523.  THE   YOUTH    OF    FROZBEL.  —  Froebel   was    born    in 
Thuringia  in  1782.     He  lost  his  mother  almost  at  birth,  and 
was    educated   by   his    father   and   his   uncle,    both   village 
pastors.     We  recollect  that  by  a  contrary  destiny,  Pestalozzi 
was  brought  up  by  his  mother.     From  his  earliest  years  he 
manifested  remarkable  traits  of  character,  and  also  mental 
tendencies  which  were  a  little  singular.     He  was  dreamy  and 
wholly    penetrated    with    a    profound    religious    sentiment. 


448  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

Thus,  the  day  when  he  believed  that  he  was  assured  by  per- 
emptory reasoning  that  he  was  not  doomed  to  eternal  flames, 
was  an  event  in  his  life.  Ardently  enamored  of  nature,  he 
considers  her  as  the  true  iuspirer  of  humanity.  This  had 
also  been  the  conception  of  Rousseau  and  of  Pestalozzi,  but 
it  exhibits  itself  with  much  more  power  in  the  case  of 
Froebel. 

It  is  difficult  to  comprehend  the  exaggeration  of  his 
thought  when  he  says  that  nature,  attentively  observed, 
appears  to  us  as  the  symbol  of  the  highest  aspirations  of 
human  life. 

"  Entire  nature,  even  the  world  of  crystals  and  stones, 
teaches  us  to  recognize  good  and  evil,  but  nowhere  in  a  more 
living,  tranquil,  clear,  and  evident  way  than  in  the  world  of 
plants  and  flowers." 

Morality,  thus  understood,  is  a  little  vague.  We  do  not 
deny  that  the  calm  life  of  the  fields  contributes  to  surround 
us  with  a  pure  atmosphere,  and  to  beget  within  us  wholesome 
and  elevated  aspirations ;  but  one  must  have  a  singularly 
sentimental  temperament  to  believe  that  nature  can  give  us 
"  the  clearest  and  the  most  obvious"  lessons  in  morals. 

524.  DIFFERENT  OCCUPATIONS. — The  first  part  of   Froe- 
bel's  life  gives  evidence  of  a  certain  unsteadiness  of  mind. 
Inconstant  in  his  tastes,  he  cannot  settle  on  a  fixed  mode  of 
life.     Improvident  and  poor,  like  Pestalozzi,  he  is  in  turn 
forester,  intendant,  architect,  preceptor ;  he  feels  his  way 
up  to  the  day  when  his  vocation  as  a  teacher  is  suddenly 
revealed  to  him.     Moreover,  he  studies  everything,  —  law, 
mineralogy,  agriculture,  mathematics. 

525.  VOCATION  TO  TEACH.  — It  was  in  1805,  at  Frankfort, 
that  Froebel  began   to  teach.      He  was  then  twenty-three. 
The  teacher  Gruner  offered  him  a  position  as  instructor  in 


THE   SUCCESSORS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  449 

the  model  school  which  he  directed ;  Froebel  accepted,  but 
he  was  of  that  number  who  do  nothing  artlessly. 

"An  accidental  circumstance  determined  my  decision.  I 
received  news  that  my  certificates  were  lost  [certificates  that 
he  had  sent  to  an  architect  to  secure  a  position  with  him]. 
I  then  concluded  that  Providence  had  intended,  by  this  inci- 
dent, to  take  from  me  the  possibility  of  a  return  backward." 

At  the  end  of  a  few  days  he  wrote  to  his  brother 
Christopher :  — 

"It  is  astonishing  how  my  duties  please  me.  From  the 
first  lesson  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  never  done  anything 
else,  and  that  I  was  born  for  that  very  thing.  I  could  no 
longer  make  it  seem  to  me  that  I  had  previously  thought  of 
following  any  occupation  but  this,  and  yet  I  confess  that  the 
idea  of  becoming  a  teacher  had  never  occurred  to  me." 

526.  FRCEBEL  AND  PESTALOZZI.  — At  the  school  in  Frank- 
fort, Frcebel,  still  a  novice  in  the  art  of  teaching,  attempted 
scarcely  more  than  scrupulously  to  apply  the  Pestalozziau 
methods. 

And  upon  many  points  Frcebel  remained  to  the  end  a 
faithful  disciple  of  Pestalozzi.  Intuition  is  the  fundamental 
principle  of  his  method,  and  we  might  say  that  his  effort  in 
pedagogy  consists  chiefly  in  organizing  into  a  system  the 
sense  intuitions  which  Pestalozzi  proposed  to  the  child  some- 
what at  random  and  without  plan. 

Froebel  had  had  direct  relations  with  Pestalozzi.  In  1808 
he  went  to  Yverdun  with  three  of  his  pupils,  and  there  spent 
two  years,  taking  part  in  the  work  of  the  institute,  and 
becoming  acquainted  with  the  methods  of  the  master.  He 
declares  that  it  was  a  "  decisive  "  epoch  in  his  life. 

But  let  us  note,  in  passing,  the  difference  in  character 
between  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel.  While  Pestalozzi  is  ever 


450  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

ready  to  accuse  himself  with  a  touching  humility,  Froebel 
regards  himself  as  almost  infallible.  He  never  attributes 
failure  to  his  own  insufficiency,  but  lays  the  blame  on  destiny 
or  on  the  ill-will  of  others.  Pestalozzi  is  ever  forgetting 
himself,  and  he  is  so  neglectful  as  to  be  uncouth  in  his  attire. 
"  He  never  knew  how  to  dress,"  say  his  biographers;  "  his 
distraction  made  him  forget  sometimes  his  cravat,  and  at 
others  his  garters."  Froebel,  on  the  contrary,  affected  an 
elegant  and  theatrical  bearing.  He  studied  effect.  At  cer- 
tain periods,  as  we  are  told,  he  wore  Hessian  boots  and  a 
Tyrolese  cap  with  high  plumes. 

527.  THE  TREATISE  ON  SPHERICITY  (1811). — It  was 
about  1811  that  the  peculiar  originality  of  Froebel  manifested 
itself,  and  this  was  done,  it  must  be  confessed,  in  an  unfortu- 
nate way,  by  the  publication  of  his  Treatise  on  Sphericity. 

Pestalozzi  somewhere  wrote :  "If  my  life  is  entitled  to 
any  credit,  it  is  that  of  having  placed  the  square  at  the  basis 
of  an  intuitive  instruction  which  has  never  yet  been  given  to 
a  people."1  This  language  coming  from  Pestalozzi  is  cer- 
tainly calculated  to  surprise  us ;  but  at  least  Pestalozzi 
meant  square  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  as  a 
geometrical  figure,  or  as  a  form  for  drawing.  When  Froe- 
bel speaks  to  us  of  the  sphere,  and  makes  of  it  the  basis  of 
education,  it  is  a  wholly  different  thing. 

In  reading  the  Treatise  on  Sphericity,  we  are  sometimes 
tempted  to  inquire  whether  we  have  to  do  with  a  well- 
balanced  mind,  or  whether  an  exuberant  imagination  has  not 
caused  the  author  to  lose  the  consciousness  of  reality. 

According  to  Froebel,  the  sphere  is  the  ideal  form  :  — 

"  The  sphere  seems  like  the  prototype  or  the  unity  of  all 
bodies  and  of  all  forms.  Not  an  angle,  not  a  line,  not  a 

1  Comment  Gertrude  instruit  scs  enfants,  translated  by  Darin,  p.  204. 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  451 

plane,  not  a  surface,  is  shown  in  it,  and  yet  it  has  all  points 
and  all  surfaces." 

Let  this  pass ;  but  besides  this,  the  sphere  has  mysterious 
relations  with  spiritual  things  ;  it  teaches  the  perfection  of 
the  moral  life. 

"To  labor  conscientiously  at  the  development  of  the 
spherical  nature  of  a  being,  is  to  effect  the  education  of  a 
being." 

An  incident  borrowed  from  the  life  of  Froebel  will  com- 
plete the  picture.  He  enlisted  as  a  volunteer  in  1812,  and 
made  the  campaigns  of  1812-1813,  with  Langethal  and  Mid- 
dendorf,  who  were  afterward  to  be  his  colleagues.  After 
the  war,  he  returned  to  Berlin,  passing  through  the  whole  of 
Germany.  During  the  whole  journey,  he  says,  "  I  was  seek- 
ing something,  but  without  reaching  a  definite  idea  of  what 
I  was  in  quest  of,  and  nothing  could  satisfy  me.  Wholly 
engrossed  in  this  thought,  I  entered  one  day  into  a  very 
beautiful  garden,  ornamented  with  plants  the  most  various. 
I  admired  them,  and  yet  none  of  them  brought  relief  to  my 
inmost  feeling. 

"  Passing  them  in  review,  at  a  glance,  in  my  soul,  I  sud- 
denly discovered  that  among  them  there  was  no  lily.  .  .  . 
Then  I  knew  what  was  lacking  in  that  garden,  and  what  I 
was  looking  for.  How  could  my  inmost  feeling  have  mani- 
fested itself  to  me  in  a  more  beautiful  way  ?  You  seek,  I 
said  to  myself,  tranquil  peace  of  heart,  harmony  of  life,  and 
purity  of  soul,  in  the  image  of  the  lily,  that  peaceful  flower, 
simple  and  pure.  The  garden,  with  all  its  v£tried  flowers, 
but  without  the  blossoms  of  the  lily,  was_  fop^njfr  like  life 
agitated  and  variegated,  but  without 
unity." 

528.  NEW  STUDIES.  —  Frcebel  returned  to  JJerluMn  1814, 
and  there  obtained  an  assistant's  place  in  the  miueralogical 


452  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

museum.  He  there  studied  at  leisure  the  geometrical  forms 
of  crystals,  and  reflected  anew  on  their  symbolical  meaning. 
Perhaps  he  derived  from  these  studies  the  idea  of  the  first 
gifts  which  he  afterwards  introduced  into  his  Kindergartens. 
It  was  not  till  two  years  afterwards  that  he  formed  the  defi- 
nite resolution  to  devote  himself  to  the  education  of  youth 
(1816).  He  first  established  himself  at  Griesheim,  and  then 
at  Keilhau  (a  league's  distance  from  Rudolstadt),  where, 
with  five  pupils,  all  his  nephews,  he  opened  a  school  which 
he  called  by  a  pompous  title,  and  one  hardly  justifiable  at 
the  beginning,  the  General  German  Institute  of  Education, 
He  succeeded  in  associating  with  himself  Langethal  and 
Middendorf.  The  establishment  was  administered  at  first  on 
a  very  modest  scale,  as  the  resources  were  slender ;  but  it 
prospered  little  by  little,  and  in  1826  it  numbered  more  than 
fifty  pupils. 

529.  INSTITUTE  AT  KEILHAU.  —  The  principles  of  Pestalozzi 
were  applied  at  Keilhau.  Langethal  and  Middendorf 
passed  their  apprenticeship  in  the  Pestalozzian  method  under 
the  direction  of  Froebel.  The  three  professors  met  in  the 
common  hall,  and  there  were  frequently  heard  as  echoes 
from  their  discussion  the  words :  intuition,  personal  initia- 
tive, proceeding  from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  "  They  are 
learning  the  system,"  said  the  children  who  heard  them. 

At  Keilhau,  physical,  intellectual,  and  moral  education 
marched  abreast.  The  master  was  to  attempt  to  penetrate 
the  individuality  of  each  child,  to  the  end  that  he  might  thence 
provoke  the  free  development  of  that  individuality.  The 
government  was  austere  and  the  fare  frugal.  The  system 
of  physical  hardening  was  carried  to  an  extreme.  The 
pupils,  winter  and  summer,  wore  a  blouse  and  cotton  trou- 
sers. A  considerable  time  was  devoted  to  religious  exer- 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF  PESTALOZZI.  453 

cises.  Froebel  always  remained  attached  to  the  Lutheran 
Church,  though  his  orthodox}-  might  have  seemed  open  to 
suspicion,  and  he  always  thought  that  education  ought  to  be 
essentially  religious. 

"  All  education  that  is  not  founded  on  religion  is  sterile." 
And  he  adds,  "All  education  that  is  not  founded  on  the 
Christian  religion  is  defective  and  incomplete." l 

530.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  MAN.  —  It  was  at  Keilhau  in 
1826,  that  Froebel  published  his  principal  work,  The  Edu- 
cation of  Man.2 

At  that  date,  the  idea  of  Kindergartens  had  not  yet  taken 
form  in  his  mind  ;  and  The  Education  of  Man  was  not  so 
much  the  exposition  of  the  practical  applications  of  Froebel's 
method,  as  a  nebulous  and  tumid  development  of  his  meta- 
physical principles.  It  is  a  book  little  read,  and,  let  it  be 
confessed,  partly  illegible !  We  have  ventured  to  speak  of 
the  nonsense  written  by  Pestalozzi.  "What  shall  be  said  of 
the  mystical  dreams  of  Frcebel?  The  pedagogy  of  the  Ger- 
mans, like  their  philosophy,  has  for  a  century  often  lost  its 
way  in  strange  theories  which  absolutely  surpass  the  com- 
prehension of  the  French  mind.  From  a  mass  of  vague  and 
pretentious  speculations  on  universal  nature,  there  are  culled 
with '  difficulty  some  ideas  which  are  well  founded.  How- 
ever, let  us  try  to  gather  up  the  obscure  idea  of  Froebel, 
made  still  more  obscure  by  the  exterior  form  of  the  work. 
In  the  first  edition  Froebel  had  omitted  to  introduce  into  the 
text  any  division  into  chapters  and  paragraphs.  The  read- 
ing of  this  uninterrupted  text  could  not  fail  to  be  laborious  ; 
even  with  the  somewhat  artificial  divisions  which  were  subse- 

1  See  the  Aphorisms  published  by  Froebel  in  1821. 

2  See  the  French  translation  by  Madame  de  Crorabrugghe,  Paris,  1881. 
Also,  the  English  translation  by  Josephine  Jarvis,  New  York,  1885. 


454  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

quently  introduced,  The  Education  of  Man  remains  difficult 
to  read  and  to  analyze. 

531.  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  WORK. — The  introduction  is  the 
most  interesting  part  of  the  work.  We  might  reduce  the 
somewhat  confused  ideas  which  it  contains  to  three  essential 

(points,  to  three  general  ideas,  of  philosophy,  of  psychology, 
and  of  pedagogy. 

The  idea  of  general  philosophy  is  this  :  "  Everything  comes 
solely  from  God.  In  God  is  the  unique  principle  of  all 
things." 

It  is  a  vague  pantheism  which  consists  in  believing  that 
all  the  objects  of  nature  are  the  direct  manifestations  of  the 
divine  activity. 

"  The  end,  the  destiny  of  each  thing,  is  to  publish  abroad 
its  being,  the  activity  of  God  which  operates  in  it,  and  the 
manner  in  which  this  activity  is  combined  with  the  thing." 
From  these  premises  Frcebel  is  logically  brought  to  this  psy- 
chological statement,  that  everything  is  good  in  man,  for  it 
is  God  who  acts  in  him.  He  pushes  his  optimism  so  far  as 
to  say :  — 

"From  his  earliest  age  the  child  yields  himself  to  justice 
and  right  with  a  surprising  tact,  for  we  rarely  see  him  avoid- 
ing them  voluntarily." 

The  pedagogical  conclusion  is  easy  to  guess :  Education 
-shall  be  essentialby  a  work  of  liberty  and  of  spontaneity.  It 
^\.\  ought  to  be  indulgent,  flexible,  supple,  and  restricted  to  pro- 
tecting and  overseeing. 

"  The  vocation  of  man,  considered  as  a  reasonable  intelli- 
gence, is  to  let  his  nature  act  in  manifesting  the  action  of  God, 
who  operates  in  him  ;  to  publish  God  outwardly,  to  acquire 
the  knowledge  of  his  real  destiny,  and  to  accomplish  it  in  aD 
liberty  and  spontaneity." 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  455 

These  last  two  words  are  repeated  ad  nauseam.  Froebel 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  there  can  be  no  general  form  of 
education  to  impose  or  even  to  recommend,  because  account 
must  be  taken  of  the  nature  of  each  child,  and  the  free 
development  of  his  individuality  provoked  by  inviting  him 
to  action  and  to  personal  exertion.  The  choice  in  the  mani- 
festation of  the  exterior  form  of  education  ought  to  be  left 
to  the  intelligence  of  the  educator,  and  there  ought  to  be 
almost  as  many  ways  of  educating  men  as  there  are  individ- 
uals, with  their  own  natures  aspiring  to  a  personal  develop- 
ment. 

532.  LOVE  FOR  CHILDREN. — Froebel,  and  this  is  perhaps 
his  best   quality,  loves   children   tenderly.      He   speaks  of 
them  with  touching  accents,  but  he  does  not  fail  to  mingle 
with  his  affection   for  them  his  habitual  symbolism.      The 
child  is  not  for  him  simply  the  little  real  being  that  he  has 
under  his  eyes.     He  sees  him  through  mystic  veils,  so  to 
speak,  and,  as  it  were,  crowned  with  an  aureole  :  — 

"  Let  the  child  always  appear  to  us  as  a  living  pledge  of 
the  presence,  of  the  goodness,  and  of  the  love  of  God." 

533.  UNITY   OF   EDUCATION.  —  Froebel  is  always  bitterly 
complaining  of  the  fragmentary  and  scrappy  character  of  the 
ordinary  education.     His  dream  was  to  introduce  unity  into 
it.     In  this  respect  he  separates  himself  squarely  from  Rous- 
seau.    The   different  stages  of  life  form  an  uninterrupted 
chain.     "  Let  life  be  considered  as  being  but  one  in  all  its 
phases,  as  forming  one  complete  whole." 

534.  DIFFERENT  STAGES  IN  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAN. 
—  Froebel,  in   The  Education  of  Man,  considers  in  succes- 
sion the  different  periods  of  life.     The  first  three  chapters 
treat  of  the  first  stages  of  development  in  man,  — the  nurseling, 
the  child,  the  young  boy.     We  here  find  pages  full  of  charm, 


456  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

upon  the  education  of  the  child  by  the  mother,  and  upon  the 
progress  of  the  faculties ;  but  pretentious  considerations 
and  whimsical  interpretations  too  often  come  to  spoil  the 
psychology  of  Froebel. 

"  The  child,"  he  says,  "  scarcely  knows  whether  he  loves 
the  flowers  for  themselves,  for  the  delight  which  they  give 
him,  ...  or  for  the  vague  intuition  which  they  give  him  of 
the  Creator." 

Farther  on  he  speaks  of  introducing  the  child  to  colors, 
and  from  this  exercise  he  at  once  draws  moral  conclusions  : 
the  child  loves  colors  because  he  comes  by  means  of  them 
"  to  the  knowledge  of  an  interior  unity." 

535.  THE   NATURALISM   OF   FRCEBEL. — The  elements  of 
education  according  to  Fro3bel  are,  with  religion,  the  artis- 
tic studies,  mathematics,  language,  and,  above  all,  nature. 
"  Teachers  should  scarcely  let  a  week  pass  without  taking  to 
the  country  a  part  of  their  pupils.    The}'  shall  not  drive  them 
before  them  like  a  flock  of  sheep.  .  .  .    They  shall  walk  with 
them  as  a  father  among  his  children,  or  a  brother  among  his 
brothers,  in  making  them  observe  and    admire  the  varied 
richness  which  nature  displays  to  their  eyes  at  each  season 
of  the  year." 

536.  NEW  EXPERIMENTS  IN  TEACHING.  —  The  institute  of 
Keilhau  did  not  long  prosper.     In  1829  it  was  necessary  to 
close  it  for  lack  of  pupils.     Frcebel  lacked  the  practical  quali- 
ties of  an  administrator.     In  1831  he  tried  in  vain  to  open  a 
new  school  at  Wartensee  in  Switzerland.     The  attacks  of  the 
clerical  party  obliged  him  to  abandon  his  project.     After 
several  other  attempts  he  was  elected  director  of  an  orphan 
asylum  at  Bnrgdorf  ;  and  it  was  there  that  he  resolved  to 
devote  his   pedagogical   efforts   to   the   education   of   early 
childhood. 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  457 

The  little  village  of  Burgdorf  had  the  honor,  within  a  period 
of  thirty-five  years,  of  offering  an  asylum  to  Pestalozzi  and 
to  Froebel,  and  of  being  the  scene  of  their  experiments  in 
pedagogy. 

537.  THE  KINDERGARTENS.  —  The  master  conception  of 
Froebel,  the  creation  of  the  Kindergarten,  was  only  slowly 
developed  in  his  mind.     It  was  only  in  1840  that  he  invented 
the  term.     Of  course,  given  the  imagination  of  Froebel,  and 
his  tendenc}"  to   symbolism,   children's  garden  ought  to  be 
taken  in  its  allegorical  sense.     The  child  is  a  plant,  the  school 
a  garden,  and  Frcebel  calls  teachers   "  gardeners  of  chil- 
dren."1 

But  before  giving  a  name  to  his  school  for  early  childhood, 
Froebel  had  long  cherished  the  idea  of  it.  In  1835,  at  Burg- 
clorf,  he  attempted  to  realize  it;  in  1837,  at  Blankenburg, 
near  Rudolstadt,  he  founded  his  first  infant  school. 

538.  ORIGIN  OF  THE  KINDERGARTEN.  —  Without  wishing  to 
belittle  the  originality  of  Froebel' s  creation,  it  is  right  to  say 
that  it  was  suggested  to  him  in  part  by  Comenius.     The  phil- 
osopher Krause  had  pointed  out  to  him  the  importance  of  the 
writings  of  the  Slavic  educator.     He  studied  them,  and  the 
Kindergarten  certainly  has  some  relations  of  parenthood  with 
the  schola  materni  gremii.     There  is,  however,  one  essential 
difference  between  the  idea  of  Comenius  and  that  of  Froebel, 
—  the  first  confided  to  the  mother  the  cares  which  the  second 
relegates  to  the  teachers  of  the  children's  gardens. 

It  is  said  that  it  was  from  seeing  a  child  playing  at  ball 
that  Froebel  conceived  the  first  idea  of  his  system.  We  know 

1  Consequently  it  is  wrong  to  take  Froabel's  expression  in  the  sense  that 
he  wished  to  establish  by  the  side  of  each  school  a  garden,  a  lawn  planted 
with  trees  and  adorned  with  flower-beds.  See  Greard,  L' instruction  pri- 
maire  a  Paris,  1877,  p.  73. 


458  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

what  importance  he  attached  to  the  spherical  form  and  to 
play.  The  first  principle  of  his  Kindergarten  was  then  that 
the  child  ought  to  play,  and  to  play  at  ball. 

But  Froebel  enveloped  the  simplest  ideas  in  prolix  and 
whimsical  theories.  If  he  recommends  the  ball,  it  is  not  for 
positive  reasons,  nor  because  it  is  an  inoffensive  play,  very 
appropriate  to  the  need  of  movement  which  characterizes  the 
child.  It  is  because  the  ball  is  the  symbol  of  unity.  The 
cube,  which  was  to  succeed  the  ball,  represents  diversity  in 
unity.  It  is  also  because  the  word  ball  is  a  symbolic  word, 
formed  from  letters  borrowed  from  the  German  words  Bild 
von  all,  picture  of  the  whole. 

Frcebel  came  to  attribute  an  occult  meaning  to  the  differ- 
ent letters  of  words.  He  thought  he  found  in  the  figures  of 
the  year  1836,  the  date  of  his  first  conception  of  the  Kinder- 
garten, the  proof  that  that  year  was  to  open  to  humanity  a 
new  era,  and  he  expressed  his  views  in  an  essay  entitled  : 
The  Year  1S36  requires  a  Renovation  of  Life.  In  this  we 
read  such  things  as  these  :  ' '  The  word  marriage  (German 
Ehe)  represents  by  its  two  vowels  e-e,  life;  these  two  vowels 
are  united  by  the  consonant  7<,  thus  symbolizing  a  double 
life  which  the  spirit  unites  ;  again,  the  two  halves  thus  united 
are  similar  and  equal  each  to  each  :  e-7*-e."  And  farther  on  : 
"  AVhat  does  the  word  German  (Deutsch)  signify?  It  is  de- 
rived from  the  word  deuten  (signifying  to  manifest),  which 
designates  the  act  by  which  self-conscious  thought  is  clearly 
manifested  outwardly.  .  .  .  To  be  a  German  is  then  to  raise 
one's  self  as  an  individual  and  as  a  whole,  by  a  clear  mani- 
festation of  one's  self,  to  a  clear  consciousness  of  self." 

539.  THE  GIFTS  OF  FRCEBEL.  —  Under  the  graceful 
name  of  gifts,  Froebel  presents  to  the  child  a  certain  number 
of  objects  which  are  to  serve  as  material  for  his  exercises. 


THE   SUCCESSORS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  459 

The  five  gifts  are  contained  in  a  box  from  which  they  are 
taken  in  succession,  as  the  children  are  in  a  condition  to  re- 
ceive them.  In  the  original  plan  of  Froebel,  these  gifts 
were:  1.  the  ball;  2.  the  sphere  and  the  cube;  3.  the  cube 
divided  into  eight  equal  parts ;  4.  the  cube  divided  into  eight 
rectangular  parallelepipeds,  in  the  form  of  building-bricks, 
which  the  child  will  use  as  material  for  little  constructions  ; 
5.  the  cube  divided  in  each  of  its  dimensions,  that  is,  cut  into 
twenty-seven  equal  cubes  ;  three  of  them  are  subdivided  into 
two  prisms,  and  three  others  into  four  prisms,  by  means  of 
an  oblique  section,  single  or  double.1  And  to  these  gifts 
Froebel  added  other  objects,  such  as  thin  strips  of  wood  and 
little  sticks  for  constructing  figures  ;  and  bits  of  paper  for 
braiding,  folding,  dotting,  etc. 

The  conception  of  Froebel  does  not  rest,  as  one  might 
think,  on  the  adaptation  of  the  objects  which  he  chooses  in 
succession,  to  the  faculties  of  the  child.  It  is  not  this  at  all 
which  interests  him.  The  order  which  he  has  adopted  is 
derived  from  another  principle.  According  to  him,  the  form 
of  bodies  has  an  intimate  relation  with  the  general  laws  of 
the  universe.  There  is,  consequently,  a  methodical  grada- 
tion to  be  observed,  according  to  the  intrinsic  character  of 
the  objects  themselves,  for  the  purpose  of  initiating  the  child 
into  the  laws  of  the  divine  thought  symbolized  in  the  sphere, 
in  the  cube,  in  the  cylinder,  etc.  Froebel  was  greatly  irritated 
at  those  of  his  scholars  who  misunderstood  the  philosophical 
import  of  his  "  gifts,"  and  who  saw  in  them  only  plays. 
t;  If  my  material  for  instruction  possesses  some  utility,"  he 
said,  "  it  does  not  owe  it  to  its  exterior  appearance,  which 
has  nothing  striking  and  offers  no  novelty.  It  owes  it  sim- 

1  The  disciples  of  Froebel  have  modified  in  different  manners  his  system 
of  gifts.  See,  for  example,  the  Jardin  d'cnfants,  by  Goldainnaer,  French 
translation  by  Louis  Fournier,  1877. 


460  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ply  to  the  way  in  which  I  use  it,  that  is,  to  iny  method 
and  to  the  philosophical  law  on  which  it  is  founded.  The 
justification  of  my  system  of  education  is  entirely  in  this  laic; 
,  according  as  this  law  is  rejected  or  admitted,  the  system  falls 
or  continues- with  it.  All  the  rest  is  but  material  without  any 
value  of  its  own." 

It  is  this  "material,"  however,  which  for  Froebel  had  no 
value,  that  his  admirers  have  above  all  preserved  of  his 
method,  without  longer  caring  for  the  allegorical  sense  which 
he  attached  to  it. 

540.  APPEAL  TO  THE  INSTINCTS   OF   THE   CHILD.  —  That 
which  makes,  notwithstanding  so  much  that  is  whimsical,  the 
lasting  merit  of  Froebel's  work,  that  which  justifies  in  part 
the  admiration  which  it  has  excited,  is  that  he  organized  the 
salle  d'asile,  the  infant  school,  and  that  he  realized  for  it 
that  which   Pestalozzi   had   attempted   for   the   elementary 
school.     He  knew  how  to  make  an  appeal  to  the  instincts  of 
the  youngest  child,  to  combine  a  system  of  exercises  for  the 
training  of  the  hand,  for  the  education   of  the  senses,  to 
satisfy  the  need  of  movement  and  activity  which  develops 
itself  from  the  first  day  of  life,  and,  finally,  to  make  of  the 
child  a  creator,  a  little  artist  always  at  work. 

For  the  old  education,  which  he  calls  "  a  hot-house  educa- 
tion," and  in  which  the  instruction,  premature  through  lan- 
guage, smothers  in  their  germs  the  native  powers  of  the 
child,  in  order  to  excite  his  memory  and  his  judgment  by 
artificial  means,  —  for  this  education  he  substitutes  a  free  and 
cheerful  education  which  cultivates  the  faculties  of  the  child 
by  love,  and  which  makes  a  just  estimate  of  his  instincts. 
Books  are  suppressed,  and  lessons  also.  The  child  freely 
expands  in  play. 

541.  THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  PLAY.  — With  Froebel,  play  be- 
came   an   essential   element   of   education.     This  ingenious 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF  PESTALOZZI.  461 

teacher  knew  how  to  make  of  it  an  art,  an  instrument  for  the 
development  of  the  infant  faculties. 

"The  plays  of  the  child,"  he  said,  "  are,  as  it  were,  the 
germ  of  the  whole  life  which  is  to  follow,  for  the  whole  man 
develops  and  manifests  itself  in  it ;  in  it  he  reveals  his 
noblest  aptitudes  and  the  deepest  elements  of  his  being. 
The  whole  life  of  man  has  its  source  in  that  epoch  of  exis- 
tence, and  whether  that  life  is  serene  or  sad,  tranquil  or 
tigitated,  fruitful  or  sterile,  whether  it  brings  peace  or  war, 
tliat  depends  on  the  care,  more  or  less  judicious,  given  to  the 
beginnings  of  existence." 

542.  PRINCIPAL  NEEDS  OF  THE  CHILD.  —  Gre"ard,  in  a  re- 
markable study  on  the  method  of  Froebel,  reduces  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  child  to  three  essential  instincts  :  — 

1 .  The  taste  for  observation  :  — 

"  All  the  senses  of  the  child  are  on  the  alert ;  all  the  ob- 
jects which  his  sight  or  his  hand  encounters  attract  him, 
interest  him,  delight  him.". 

2.  The  need  of  activity,  the  taste  for  construction  :  — 

"  It  is  not  enough  that  we  show  him  objects  ;  it  is  neces- 
sary that  lie  touch  them,  that  he  handle  them,  that  he  appro- 
priate them  to  himself.  .  .  .  He  takes  delight  in  construct- 
ing ;  he  is  naturally  geometrician  and  artist." 

3.  Finally,  the  sentiment  of  personality  :  — 

"  He  wishes  to  have  his  own  place,  his  own  occupation, 
his  own  teacher." 

Now  Froebel's  method  has  precisely  for  its  object  the 
satisfaction  of  these  different  instincts. 

"  To  place  the  child  before  a  common  table."  says  Gre"ard, 
"  but  with  his  own  chair  and  a  place  that  belongs  to  him,  so 
that  he  feels  that  he  is  the  owner  of  his  little  domain  ;  to 
excite  at  the  very  beginning  his  good  will  by  the  promise  of 


462  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

an  interesting  game ;  to  develop  in  succession  under  his 
very  eyes  the  marvels  of  the  five  gifts  :  to  teach  him  in  the 
first  place,  from  concrete  objects  exposed  to  his  sight,  balls 
of  colored  worsted  and  geometrical  solids,  to  distinguish 
color,  form,  material,  the  different  parts  of  a  body,  so  as  to 
accustom  him  to  see,  that  is,  to  seize  the  aspects,  the  figures, 
the  resemblances,  the  differences,  the  relations  of  things  ; 
then  to  place  the  objects  in  his  hands,  and  to  teach  him  to 
make  with  the  balls  of  colored  worsted  combinations  of  col- 
ors agreeable  to  the  eye,  to  arrange,  with  matches  united 
by  balls  of  cork,  squares,  angles,  triangles  of  all  sorts,  to 
set  up  little  cubes  in  the  form  of  crosses,  pyramids,  etc.  ;  — 
then,  either  by  means  of  strips  of  colored  paper  placed  in 
different  directions,  interlaced  into  one  another,  braided  as  a 
weaver  would  make  a  fabric,  or  with  the  crayon,  to  drill  him 
in  reproducing,  in  creating,  designs  representing  all  the 
geometrical  forms,  so  that  to  the  habit  of  observation  is 
gradually  joined  that  of  invention  ;  finally,  while  his  hand 
is  busy  in  concert  with  his  intelligence,  and  while  his  need  of 
activity  is  satisfied,  to  take  advantage  of  this  awakened  and 
satisfied  attention  to  fix  in  his  mind  by  appropriate  questions 
some  notions  of  the  properties  and  uses  of  forms,  by  relating 
them  to  some  great  principle  of  general  order,  simple  and 
fruitful,  to  mingle  the  practical  lesson  with  moral  observa- 
tions, drawn  in  particular  from  the  incidents  of  the  school 
—  this,  in  its  natural  progress  and  its  normal  development,  is 
the  method  of  Froebel." 

543.  DEFECTS  IN  FROEBEL'S  METHOD.  —  There  is  ground 
for  thinking,  notwithstanding  all,  that  Froebel' s  method  is  a 
little  complicated,  a  little  artificial,  and  that  it  sometimes 
pi'oceeds  in  opposition  to  the  natural  disposition  of  children. 
Their  soul,  he  said,  cannot  in  the  first  period  of  its  develop- 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  463 

meut,  recognize  itself,  apprehend  itself,  save  in  the  percep- 
tion of  the  simplest  forms  of  the  exterior  world,  presented  in 
a  concrete  manner.  Now  nature  of  herself  does  not  offer 
these  elementary  forms  ;  it  is  necessary  to  know  how  to  ex- 
tract them  from  the  infinite  diversity  of  things.  And  Frce- 
bel  found  these  simple  forms  in  the  sphere,  the  cube,  and  the 
cylinder. 

But  these  forms,  we  reply,  are  but  abstractions ;  it  does 
not  suffice  to  say  that  the  cube  and  the  sphere  are  material 
and  palpable,  —  they  are  none  the  less  the  product  of  ab- 
stract thought  on  this  account ;  nature  does  not  present  these 
simple  geometrical  forms ;  everything  in  them  is  complex. 
Now  the  nascent  thought  is  employed  at  first  on  real  things, 
on  the  living  and  irregular  forms  of  animals  and  vegetables  ; 
then  in  this  case,  the  mind  proceeds  naturally  from  the  com- 
plex to  the  simple,  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract.  It 
seems,  on  the  contrary,  that  Frcobel  begins  with  the  abstract 
in  order  to  arrive  at  the  concrete. 

In  the  school  of  Frcebel  other  defects  have  been  developed. 
An  abuse  has  been  made  of  the  exercises  in  imitation  and 
invention.  The  child  has  been  made  to  produce  marvels  of 
construction  which  take  too  much  of  his  time  and  demand  of 
him  too  much  effort.  It  has  been  forgotten  that  these  em- 
ployments should  be  preparatory  exercises,  —  means,  and 
not  the  end  of  education. 

544.  THE  LAST  ESTABLISHMENTS  OF  FRCEBEL. — Towards 
1840,  the  ideas  of  Frcebel  began  to  become  popular.  His 
methods  attracted  attention.  Then  he  wished  to  transform 
his  school  at  Blankenbnrg  into  a  model  establishment.  He 
addressed  an  appeal  to  the  German  nation  in  favor  of  his 
work,  but  it  was  only  slightly  successful.  Obliged  in  1844 
to  close  his  institute,  through  lack  of  resources,  he  then 


464  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

travelled  through  German}'  in  order  to  make  known  his 
methods.  He  did  not  derive  from  his  journey  the  profit  that 
he  expected  from  it,  and,  discouraged,  he  returned  once 
more  to  Keilhau,  where  he  opened  a  course  in  method,  or  a 
normal  course,  for  the  use  of  young  women  who  were  pre- 
paring themselves  for  the  education  of  infants.  This  asso- 
ciation with  women,  in  which  Froebel  lived  till  his  death, 
exercised  a  profound  influence  on  the  development  of  his 
system.  A  much  greater  share  of  attention  was  given  to  the 
practical  exercises,  and  the  mathematics  was  put  in  the  back- 
ground. 

In  1850  he  obtained  through  the  intervention  of  the  Bar- 
oness von  Marenholtz,  one  of  his  most  ardent  admirers,  the 
lease  of  the  Castle  of  Marienthal,  and  to  this  he  transferred 
his  establishment.  A  long  period  of  activity  seemed  open- 
ing before  him.  He  personally  directed  the  games  of  the 
children,  and  trained  the  teachers ;  but  he  died  suddenly 
in  1852. 

545.  FRCEBEL  AND  DIESTERWEG.  —  However,  before  his 
death,  Frcebel  was  able  to  witness  the  growing  success  of 
his  work.  Each  day  he  received  eminent  adhesions  ;  for  ex- 
ample, that  of  Diesterweg.1  It  was  through  the  mediation 
of  the  Baroness  von  Marenholtz  that  Froebel  and  Diesterweg, 
the  celebrated  director  of  the  normal  school  of  Berlin,  be- 
came acquainted.  Diesterweg  was  a  strong  and  practical 
spirit,  who  contributed  much  to  the  development  of  instruction 
in  Prussia.  At  first  he  had  a  contempt  for  Frcebel,  whom 
he  treated  as  a  charlatan  ;  but  on  his  first  conversation  with 
him  he  changed  his  opinion.  He  was  taken  to  the  school- 
room in  which  Froebel  was  teaching ;  but  wholly  intent  on 

1  See  on  Diesterweg  the  article  by  Pe'caut,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de 
Pedagogic. 


THE   SUCCESSOHS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  465 

his  work,  Frcebel  did  not  observe  the  presence  of  the  visitor. 
Diesterweg  was  impressed  by  seeing  this  old  man  devoting 
himself  entirely  to  his  little  pupils,  and  his  prejudices  disap- 
peared. To  a  certain  extent  he  became  the  propagator  of 
Froebel's  ideas.  He  agreed  with  him  on  his  general  concep- 
tion of  the  needs  of  the  child,  and  of  the  province  of  woman 
as  the  earliest  educator. 

546.  SUCCESS  OF  FIKEBEL'S  WORK. — Froebel  had  other  imi- 
tators.    Like  Pestalozzi,  he  inspired  a  large  number  of  minds 
by  his  writings,  and  through  the  zeal  of  Madame  von  Maren- 
holtz,  and  of  some  other  disciples,  his  practical  work  pros- 
pered.     The  Kindergartens  have  been  multiplied  in  many 
places,  and  particularly  in  Austria. 

547.  THE  PERE  GIRARD  (1765-1850).  —  The  Pere  Girard 
is  the  most  eminent  educator  of  modern  Switzerland.     Less 
celebrated  than  Pestalozzi  and  Frcebel,  he  yet  has  this  advan- 
tage over  them,  of  having  been  better  prepared  for  his  pro- 
fession as  an  educator.     After  having  finished  a  thorough 
and  complete  course  of  classical  study,  he  for  a  long  time 
taught  the  same  subjects  in  the  same  school.     He  acquired 
experience  and  wrote  his  treatises  only  in  an  advanced  age, 
at  a  time  when  he  was  in  complete  possession  of  his  ideas. 
He  was  in   fact  seventy-nine  years  old  when  he  published 
his  book  On  the  Systematic  Teaching  of  the  Mother  Tongue. 
It  is  a  work  of  mature  thought,  and  sums  up  a  whole  life- 
time of  labor.     Less  addicted  to  system  than  Frcebel  and 
Pestalozzi,  the  Pere   Girard   still   carries   mere   system  too 
far,  and  makes  a  misuse  of  the  principle  which  consisted  in 
making  of  all  the  parts  of  instruction  the  elements  of  moral 
education. 

548.  LIFE  OF  THE  PERE  GIRARD.  —  Girard  was  born  in 
Friburg  in  1765.     His  pedagogic  instinct  manifested  itself 


466  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

at  an  early  hour.  While  still  very  young  he  aided  his  mother 
in  instructing  his  fourteen  brothers  and  sisters.  Like  Froebel, 
he  was  passionately  fond  of  religious  questions.  One  day  as 
he  had  heard  his  preceptor  say  that  there  was  no  salvation 
outside  of  the  Roman  Church,  he  sought  his  mother  in  tears, 
and  asked  her  if  the  Protestant  tradesman  who  brought  her 
fruit  each  day  would  be  damned.  His  mother  reassured 
him,  and  he  always  remained  faithful  to  what  he  called  "the 
theology  of  his  mother,"  —  a  tolerant  and  broad  theology 
which  brought  on  him  the  hatred  of  the  Jesuits. 

At  the  age  of  sixteen  he  entered  the  order  of  the  Gray 
Friars,  and  completed  his  novitiate  at  Lucerne.  He  then 
taught  in  several  convents,  in  particular  at  Wurtzburg,  where 
he  remained  four  years  (1785-1788).  He  returned  to  Fri- 
burg  in  1789,  and  for  ten  years  he  devoted  himself  almost 
exclusively  to  his  ecclesiastical  functions. 

But  his  vocation  as  an  educator  was  even  then  indicated 
by  some  things  that  he  had  written. 

In  1798,  under  the  influence  of  the  ideas  of  Kant,  whose 
philosophical  doctrine  he  had  ardently  studied,  he  published 
a  Scheme  of  Education  for  all  Helvetia,  addressed  to  the 
Swiss  minister  Stapfer,' who  was  also  the  patron  of  Pesta- 
lozzi. 

It  was  only  in  1804,  that  Girard  devoted  himself  entirely 
to  teaching,  the  very  year  in  which  Fro3bel  began  his  work. 
He  was  appointed  to  direct  the  primary  school  at  Friburg, 
which  had  just  been  entrusted  to  the  Gray  Friars.  Girard 
received  the  title  of  "  prefect  of  studies,"  and  for  nineteen 
years,  from  1805  to  1823,  he  exercised  his  functions  as  a 
teacher  in  that  school.  Very  small  in  the  beginning,  the 
school  had  a  remarkable  growth.  There  was  added  to  it 
even  a  school  for  girls.  At  first  Girard  had  Gra}-  Friars  for 
colleagues  ;  but  he  soon  replaced  them  with  lay  teachers, 


THE    SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  407 

who  obeyed  him  better  and  devoted  themselves  more  entirely 
to  their  task.     The  teacher  of  drawing  was  a  Protestant. 

549.  SUCCESS  OF  THE  SCHOOL  AT  FRIBURG. — A  disciple 
and  an  admirer  of  Girard,  the  pastor  Naville,  has  related  in 
his  work  on  Public  Education *  the  brilliant  results  obtained 
by  Girard  in  his  school  at  Fribnrg. 

"He  had  trained  a  body  of  youth  the  like  of  which 
perhaps  no  city  in  the  world  could  furnish.  It  was 
not  without  a  profound  emotion  that  the  friends  of  hu- 
manity contemplated  a  spectacle  so  new  and  so  touching. 
That  ignorant  and  boorish  class,  full  of  prejudices,  which 
everywhere  abounds,  was  no  longer  met  with  at  Friburg.  .  .  . 
The  young  there  developed  graces  of  an  amiable  deportment 
which  were  never  marred  by  anything  disagreeable  in  tone, 
speech,  or  manner.  If,  seeing  children  approaching  you 
covered  with  rags,  you  approached  them  thinking  that  you 
were  about  to  encounter  little  ruffians,  you  were  wholly  sur- 
prised to  have  them  reply  to  you  with  politeness,  with  judg- 
ment, and  with  that  accent  which  bespeaks  genteel  manners 
and  a  careful  education.  .  .  .  You  will  find  the  explanation 
in  the  school,  when  you  observe  the  groups  where  these  same 
children  exercise  by  turns,  as  in  playing,  their  judgment  and 
their  conscience.  Three  or  four  hours  a  day  emplo}'ed  in 
this  work  gave  the  young  that  intelligence,  those  sentiments, 
and  those  manners  which  delighted  you." 

550.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  THE  PERE  GIRARD.  —  Notwith- 
standing the  success  of  his  instruction,  the  Pere  Girard  was 
obliged  to  abandon  the  charge  of  his  school  in  1823.     His 
loss  of  position  was  the  result  of  the  intrigues  of  the  Jes- 

^De  I'education  publiqnc.  Paris,  1833,  p.  158.  Naville  (1784-1846) 
founded  in  1817,  at  Vernier,  near  Geneva,  an  institute  where  he  applied 
with  success  the  educative  method  of  the  Pere  Girard. 


4«>S  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

uits,  whose  college  had  been  re-established  in  1818.  He  left 
Friburg  amid  universal  regrets,  and  retired  to  Lucerne,  where 
he  taught  philosophy  till  1834.  At  that  date  he  returned  to 
his  native  city  and  lived  a  life  of  seclusion.  It  was  then 
that  he  wrote  his  pedagogical  works.  But  through  his  disci- 
ples, and  particularly  through  the  pastor  Naville,  the  methods 
of  the  Pere  Girard  were  known  before  he  had  published  any- 
thing. 

551.  TEACHING  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE. — Let  us  now 
examine  the  general  spirit  of  the  pedagogy  of  Girard.  It  is 
in  the  theoretical  work  which  he  published  in  1844,  and 
which  was  crowned  by  the  French  Academy  in  the  same  year, 
that  we  must  look  for  the  principles  of  his  method.  It  con- 
sisted in  "  choosing  a  study  which  may  be  considered  as  one 
essential  part  of  the  instruction  common  to  all  the  classes  of 
society,  and  which  nevertheless  is  fit  for  calling  into  exercise 
all  the  intellectual  powers."  This  study  was  the  mother 
tongue,  which  Girard  employed  for  the  moral  and  religious 
development  of  children. 

Villemain,  in  his  report  on  the  books  of  Girard,  has  clear- 
ly defined  the  purpose  of  the  common  school  as  conceived  by 
the  educator  of  Friburg  :  — 

"  Where  the  period  of  instruction  is  necessarily  short  and 
its  object  limited,  a  wise  choice  of  method  is  the  thing  of 
first  importance,  for  upon  this  choice  will  depend  the  educa- 
tion itself.  If  that  method  is  purely  technical,  if  its  exclu- 
sive object  is  reading,  writing,  and  the  rules  of  grammar  and 
computation,  the  child  of  the  common  people  will  be  poorly 
instructed  and  will  not  be  educated  at  all.  A  difficult  task 
burdens  his  memory  without  developing  his  soul.  A  new 
process  is  placed  at  his  disposal,  one  workshop  more  is  open 
to  him,  so  to  speak  ;  but  the  trace  left  by  that  instruction 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF  PESTALOZZI.  469 

will  not  be  deep,  will  sometimes  even  be  lost  through  lack  of 
application  and  exercise,  and  will  not  have  acted  on  the 
moral  nature,  too  often  absorbed  eventually  by  a  monotonous 
devotion  to  duty  or  the  excessive  fatigue  of  bodily  labor. 
The  only,  the  real  people's  school,  is  then  that  in  which  all 
the  elements  of  study  serve  for  the  culture  of  the  soul,  and 
in  which  the  child  grows  better  by  the  things  which  he  learns 
and  by  the  manner  in  which  he  learns  them." 

552.  ANALYSIS  OF  THIS  WORK. — The  book  of  Girard  is 
divided  into  four  parts.  The  first  contains  general  considera- 
tions on  the  manner  in  which  the  mother  teaches  her  children 
to  speak,  upon  the  purpose  of  a  course  of  instruction  on  the 
mother  tongue,  and  on  the  elements  which  should  compose  it. 

The  second  part  is  entitled :  The  Systematic  Teaching  of 
the  Mother  Tongue  considered  solely  as  the  Expression  of 
Thought.  It  is  language  considered  in  itself ;  but  Girard 
desires  that  the  word  should  always  be  united  to  the  thought. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  the  teaching  of  grammar  should  be 
reduced  to  verbal  instruction  ;  it  should  also  serve  to  develop 
the  thought  of  pupils. 

In  the  third  part,  the  Systematic  Teaching  of  the  Mother 
Tongue  considered  as  the  Means  of  Intellectual  Culture,  Girard 
considers  everything  which  can  contribute  to  the  development 
of  the  faculties. 

In  the  fourth  part,  the  Systematic  Teaching  of  Language 
employed  for  the  Culture  of  the  Heart,  Girard  shows  how  the 
teaching  of  language  may  assist  in  moral  education. 

A  fifth  part,  Use  of  the  Course  in  the  Mother  Tongue,  is, 
so  to  speak,  the  material  part  of  the  book,  and,  as  it  were, 
the  outline  of  the  great  practical  work  of  Girard,  the  Edu- 
cative 1  Course  in  the  Mother  Tongue. 

1  I  am  aware  that  this  term  is  riot  found  in  the  latest  \Vebster,  but  I  see 
no  other  way  of  expressing  the  force  of  the  word  €di!catif,  which  seems  to 
siguify  the  disciplinary,  or  rather  the  culture,  value  of  a  study.  (P.) 


470  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

553.  THE  GRAMMARIAN,  THE  LOGICIAN,  THE   EDUCATOR, 
—  In  other  terms,  Girard  places  himself    in  succession  at 
four  different  points  of  view  in  the  teaching  of  language :  — 

"Four  persons,"  he  says,  "  ought  to  concur  in  construct- 
ing the  course  in  the  mother  tongue :  the  grammarian,  the 
logician,  the  educator,  and,  finally,  the  man  of  letters." 

The  task  of  the  grammarian  is  to  furnish  the  material  of 
the  language  and  its  proper  forms. 

The  logician  will  teach  us  what  must  be  done  in  order  to 
cultivate  the  intelligence  of  the  young. 

The  educator  will  ever  be  inspired  by  this  grand  truth  :- 
'•  Man  acts  as  he  loves,  and  he  loves  as  he  thinks."    He  will 
try  to  grave  in  the  souls  of  children  all  the  beautiful  and 
grand  truths  which  can  awaken  and  nourish  pure  and  noble 
affections. 

Finally,  the  man  of  letters  has  also  his  part  in  the  course 
in  language,  in  the  sense  that  pupils,  besides  being  required 
from  the  beginning  of  their  studies  to  invent  propositions 
and  sentences,  will  have  a  little  later  to  compose  narratives, 
letters,  dialogues,  etc. 

554.  THE  GRAMMAR  OF  IDEAS. — Elementary  instruction 
should  have  for  its  purpose  the  development  of  the  mind 
and  the  judgment.     It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  cultivating 
the  memory  alone  and  of  causing  words  to  be  learned.     The 
Pere    Girard   would    have   grammar   made   an    exercise   in 
thinking. 

"The  grammars  in  use,"  he  says,  "are  intended  simply 
to  teach  correctness  in  speaking  and  writing.  By  their  aid 
we  are  able  finally  to  avoid  a  certain  number  of  faults  in 
style  and  orthography.  .  .  .  This  iustructiota  becomes  a 
pure  affair  of  memory,  and  the  child  becomes  accustomed 
to  pronounce  sounds  to  which  he  attaches  no  meaning.  The 


THE  SUCCESSORS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  471 

child  needs  a  grammar  of  ideas.  .  .  .      Our  grammars  of 
words  are  the  plague  of  education." 

In  other  terms,  grammar  should  be  made  above  all  else  an 
exercise  in  thinking,  and,  as  it  were,  "the  logic  of  childhood." 

555.  DISCIIEET  USE  OF  RULES.  —  The  Pere  Girard  does 
not  proscribe  rules.     The  teaching  of  language  cannot  do 
without  them;  "but  there  is,"  he  says,  "a  proper  manner 
of  presenting  them  to  children,  and  a  just  medium  to  hold." 

In  the  teaching  of  grammar  we  must  follow  the  course 
which  the  grammarians  themselves  have  followed  in  order  to 
construct  their  science:  "The  rules  were  established  on 
facts.  It  is  then  to  facts  that  they  must  be  referred  in 
instruction,  in  order  that  by  this  means  children  may  be 
taught  to  do  intelligently  what  the}'  have  hitherto  done 
through  blind  imitation.  .  .  .  Few  rules,  many  exercises. 
Rules  are  always  abstract,  dry,  and  for  this  very  reason 
poorly  adapted  to  please  children,  even  when  they  can  com- 
prehend them.  We  ought,  then,  in  general,  to  make  a  very 
sparing  use  of  them." 

So  the  Pere  Girard  particularly  recommends  practical 
exercises,  oral  instruction,  the  continual  use  of  the  black- 
board, the  active  and  animated  co-operation  of  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  class,  rapid  interrogation,  the  Socratic  method, 
the  abuse  of  which,  however,  he  criticises.1 

556.  MORAL  ARITHMETIC. 2  —  The  Pere  Girard,  like  almost 
all  the  men  who  have  conceived  an  original  idea,  has  fallen 

1  See  Chap.  III.  of  Book  III.  paragraph  1st.    Just  medium  between  two 
extremes. 

2  Here  is  an  example  from  Pere  Girard's  arithmetic:  — 

"  A  father  had  the  habit  of  going  every  evening  to  the  dram-shop,  and 
often  left  his  family  at  home  without  bread.  During  the  five  years  that 
he  led  this  life,  he  spent,  the  first  year,  197  francs,  the  second,  204  francs, 


472  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

into  the  love  of  systematizing.  He  believed  that  not  only 
language,  but  all  the  branches  of  study  might  contribute  to 
moral  education. 

"He  conceived,"  says  Naville,  "that  by  means  of  a 
selection  of  problems  adapted  to  the  development  of  the 
social  affections  in  the  family,  the  commune,  and  the  State, 
one  might  give  to  arithmetic  such  a  wholesome  direction  that 
it  might  be  made  to  contribute,  not  only  to  making  the  child 
prudent  and  economical,  but  even  more  to  extend  his  views 
beyond  the  narrow  circle  of  selfishness,  and  to  cultivate  in 
him  beneficent  dispositions." l 

557.  MOKAL  GEOGRAPHY.  —  It  is  in  the  same  spirit  that 
he  claimed  to  find  in  the  study  of  geography  a  means  of 
contributing  to  the  development  of  the  moral  nature. 

"  According  to  my  honest  conviction,  every  elementary 
work  for  children  ought  to  be  a  means  of  education.  If  it 
is  limited  to  giving  knowledge,  if  it  is  limited  to  developing 
the  faculties  of  the  pupil,  I  can  approve  the  order  and  the 
life  which  the  author  has  known  how  to  put  into  his  work  ; 
but  I  am  not  satisfied  with  it.  I  am  even  offended  to  find 
only  a  teacher  of  language,  of  natural  history,  of  geography, 
etc.,  when  I  expected  something  much  greater, — an  instructor 
of  the  young,  training  the  mind  in  order  to  train  the  heart. 
.  .  .  Geography  lends  itself  as  marvellously  to  this  sublime 
purpose,  although  in  a  sphere  a  little  narrower."2 

558.  EDUCATIVE    COURSE    IN    THE    MOTHER    TONGUE.  — 
Girard  is  not  content  to  state  his  doctrine  in  his  book  On  the 

the  third,  212  francs,  and  the  fourth,  129  francs.  How  many  francs  would 
this  unfortunate  father  have  saved  if  he  had  not  had  a  taste  for  drink  ?  "  (P.) 

1  Naville,  De  I' Education  publique,  p.  411. 

2  Explication  du  plan  de  Fribourg  en  Suisse,  1817. 


THE   SUCCESSORS   OF   PESTALOZZI.  473 

Systematic  Teaching  of  the  Mother  Tongue  ;  but  in  the  four 
volumes  of  his  Educative  Course  (1844-1846)  he  has  applied 
his  method.  Full  of  new  and  radical  views,  original  in  the 
arrangement  of  material  as  in  its  system  of  exposition, 
revolutionary  even  in  its  grammatical  terminology,  this  book 
is  a  mine  from  which  we  may  borrow  without  stint,  only 
we  shall  not  advise  wholesale  adoption  :  there  is  matter  to 
take  and  to  leave.1 

559.  ANALYSIS  OF  THIS  WORK. — The  title  indicates  the 
general  character  of  the  work.  In  his  Cours  ediicatif,  Girard 
does  not  separate  education  from  instruction.  The  purpose 
is  to  develop  the  moral  and  religious  sentiments  of  the  child, 
no  less  than  to  teach  him  his  native  language. 

The  first  lessons  in  grammar  ought  to  be  lessons  in  things. 
The  child  is  made  to  name  the  objects  which  he  knows,  —  per- 
sons, animals,  things,  — and  through  these  he  is  made  to  ac- 
quire notions  of  nouns,  common  and  proper,  of  gender  and 
number.  He  is  then  induced  to  find  for  himself  the  physical, 
intellectual,  and  moral  qualities  of  objects,  and  by  this  means 
is  made  familiar  with  qualifying  adjectives.  Care  is  taken, 
moreover,  while  causing  each  quality  to  be  named,  as  farther 
on  while  causing  each  judgment  to  be  expressed,  to  ask  the 
child,  "  Is  this  right?  Is  this  wrong?" 

The  agreement  of  adjective  with  noun  is  learned  by  prac- 
tice. The  child  is  drilled  in  applying  adjectives  to  the  nouns 
which  he  has  found,  and  vice  versa. 

Once  in  possession  of  the  essential  elements  of  the  propo- 
sition, the  child  begins  the  study  of  the  proposition  itself, 
and  finally  the  study  of  the  verb.  Girard  makes  it  a  princi- 
ple always  to  have  the  conjugations  made  by  means  of  propo- 

1  See  the  interesting  articles  of  Lafargue  in  the  Bulletin  pedayoyique 
de  I'enseignement  secondaire,  1882. 


474  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

sitious.  At  first,  however,  he  employs  in  simple  propositions 
only  the  indicative,  the  infinitive,  the  imperative,  and  tlie 
participle  ;  he  postpones  till  later  the  study  of  the  conditional 
and  the  subjunctive.  It  is  to  be  noted,  in  addition,  that  he 
brings  forward  simultaneously  the  simple  tenses  of  all  the 
conjugations. 

The  order  followed  by  Girard  is  wholly  different  from  that 
of  the  ordinary  grammars.  This  is  how  he  explains  it :  — 

"  In  their  first  part,  the  grammars  set  out  in  a  row  the  nine 
sorts  of  woi'ds,  and  thus  give  in  rapid  succession  their  defini- 
tions, distinctions,  and  variable  forms,  which  introduces  a 
legion  of  terms  wholly  unknown  to  the  child.  The  second 
part  of  these  grammars  takes  up  these  words  again  in  the 
same  order,  so  as,  in  an  uninteresting  way,  to  regulate 
their  use  in  construction, —  a  tedious  and  arid  system,  which 
affords  the  child  no  interest." 

Elsewhere,  speaking  of  his  own  work,  he  writes  :  — 

"  My  work  differs  essentially  from  the  grammars  which 
are  put  in  the  hands  of  children.  When  we  write  on  lan- 
guage for  adults,  we  may  adhere  to  definitions,  distinctions, 
rules,  and  exceptions,  and  formulate  statements  regarding 
their  proper  use  ;  but  he  who  writes  for  children  ought  to 
have  the  education  of  the  mind  and  heart  in  view,  and  regu- 
late on  that  basis  the  course  and  form  of  instruction.  The 
course  ought  to  be  rigorously  progressive,  and  the  pupils 
ought,  from  beginning  to  end,  to  assist  themselves  in  con- 
structing a  grammar  of  their  own." 

"  So,  instead  of  making  generalizations  on  the  noun, 
adjective,  verb,  etc.,  and  of  connecting  with  these  parts  of 
speech  all  that  relates  to  them,  we  must  apply  ourselves  to 
the  substance  of  language,  passing  step  by  step  from  the 
simple  to  the  complex,  and  teaching  children  to  think,  in 
order  to  teach  them  to  comprehend  and  to  speak  the  language 


THE   SUCCESSORS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  475 

of  man.  The  little  details  cannot  appear  till  later,  and  as 
occasion  requires.  From  this  there  necessarily  results  a 
displacement  of  grammatical  material  which  has  been  indus- 
triously collected  and  arranged.  Hence,  also,  a  great  parsi- 
mony in  definitions  and  abstract  distinctions  which  repel 
children." 

560.  EDUCATIONAL  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  PERE  GIRARD.  — 
The  influence  of  the  Fere  Girard  was  not  extended  simply  to 
Switzerland.  It  has  radiated  abroad.  His  ideas  have  been 
disseminated  in  Italy,  propagated  by  the  Abbe  Lambruschini 
and  by  Enrico  Mayer.  A  journal  even  has  been  founded  to 
serve  as  the  organ  of  the  "Girardists"  of  the  Peninsula. 
In  France,  Michel,  in  the  Journal  de  I'Mucation  pratique, 
and  Rapet  in  different  works,1  have  commended  to  public 
attention  the  methods  of  the  Swiss  educator.  Finally,  it 
may  be  remarked  that  the  principles  very  recently  set  forth 
by  the  Conseil  superieure  de  I'instruction  publique  (1880), 
on  the  teaching  of  French  in  the  elementary  classes  of  the 
lyce"es,  are  in  great  part  the  echo  of  the  pedagogical  doctrine 
of  the  Pere  Girard. 

[561.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1 .  In  this  study  we  have  the 
third  exposition,  in  historical  order,  —  Rousseau,  Pestalozzi, 
Froebel,  — of  the  doctrine  of  nature  as  applied  to  education. 
This  doctrine  may  be  summarized  as  follows  :  — 

The  existing  order  of  things  is  conceived  as  an  animated 
organism,  and  is  personified  under  the  term  Nature.  All 
living  things,  such  as  plants,  animals,  and  men,  are  products 
of  the  creative  power  that  is  immanent  in  nature,  and  each 
is  predetermined  to  an  upward  development  in  the  line  of 

i  Monsieurs  Rapet  and  Michel  were  associated  in  the  publication  of  the 
Cours  educatif  de  la  langue  muternelle. 


476  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

growth.  This  growth  is  an  unfolding  from  within  outward, 
and  each  individual  thiug,  as  a  child,  has  reached  the 
terra  of  its  development  when  it  has  grown  into  the  type  of 
its  kind.  In  the  case  of  the  human  species,  this  growth  is 
best  when  it  is  natural,  and  it  is  natural  to  the  degree  in 
which  it  takes  place  without  the  deliberate  intervention  of 
art.  This  process  of  development  is  Nature's  work,  and  its 
synonym  is  education.  Education  is  best  when  it  is  most 
natural,  that  is,  when  it  suffers  least  from  human  interfer- 
ence. The  question  of  the  relative  parts  to  be  played  by 
Nature  and  by  Art  in  education  has  given  rise  to  two  schools 
of  educators. 

2.  In  Frcebel's  application  of  this  doctrine,  the  original 
conception  is  obscured  by  three  circumstances  :   1 .  his  deism  ; 
2.  his  mysticism  or  symbolism  ;  3.  his  dependence  on  artifi- 
cial agents,  his  "  gifts,"  and  his  belief  in  the  potency  of 
abstractions. 

3.  The  Kindergarten  has  introduced  many  ameliorations 
into  primary  instruction,  and  its  tendency  is  to  make  child- 
life  happy  through  self-activity.     Its  shortcomings  are  that 
it  undervalues  the  acquisition  of  second-hand  knowledge, 
obscures  the  distinction  between  work  and  play,  and  indis- 
poses, and  perhaps  unfits,  the  pupil  to  contend  with  real 
difficulties.1 

4.  The  effect  of  this  new  movement  in  primary  instruction 
upon  educational  science  has  been  wholesome.    It  has  induced 
a  closer  study  of  child  nature,  has  enlisted  the  sympathies 


1  "  Man  owes  his  growth,  his  energy,  chiefly  to  that  striving  of  the  will, 
that  conflict  with  difficulty,  which  we  call  effort.  Easy,  pleasant  work 
does  not  make  robust  minds,  does  not  give  men  a  consciousness  of  their 
powers,  does  not  train  them  to  endurance,  to  perseverance,  to  steady  force 
of  will,  that  force  without  which  all  other  acquisitions  avail  nothing." 
Dr.  Channing. 


THE   SUCCESSORS    OF   PESTALOZZI.  477 

and  affections  in  support  of  elementary  instruction,  and  has 
profoundly  modified  the  conception  of  the  primary  school. 

5.  Whether  the  Kindergarten  is  to  be  maintained  apart, 
as  an  institution  sui  generis,  or  whether  it  is  to  lose  its  iden- 
tity by  the  absorption  of  its  spirit  into  the  primary  school,  is 
a  question  for  the  future.     Probably  the  latter  result  will 
follow. 

6.  The  misuse  of  a  good  thought  is  seen  in  the  attempt  of 
the  Pere  Girard  to  give  a  distinct  moral  value  to  every  school 
exercise.     It  is  the  verdict  of   experience  that  the  moral 
value  of  science  is  greatest  when  it  is  taught  simply  as  science, 
and  that  the  direct  teaching  of  ethics  should  be  conducted 
on  an  independent  basis.] 


CHAPTER  XX. 

WOMEN  AS  EDUCATORS. 

WOMEN  AS  EDUCATORS;  MADAME  DE  GENLIS  (1746-1830);  PEDAGOGICAL 
WORKS;  ENCYCLOPEDIC  EDUCATION;  IMITATION  OF  ROUSSEAI  ; 
MISS  EDGEWORTH  (1767-1849);  MISS  HAMILTON  (1758-1816);  MADAME 
CAMPAN  (1752-1822);  COMMENDATION  OF  HOME  EDUCATION;  P11O<;- 
RESS  IN  INSTRUCTION  ;  INTEREST  IN  POPULAR  EDUCATION  J 
MADAME  DE  REMUSAT  (1780-1821)  J  OUTLINE  OF  FEMININE  PSY- 
CHOLOGY;  THE  SERIOUS  IN  EDUCATION;  PHILOSOPHICAL  SPIHIT  ; 
MADAME  GUIZOT  (1773-1827);  LETTERS  ON  EDUCATION  J  PSYCHOLOGICAL 
OPTIMISM;  NATURE  OF  THE  CHILD;  PHILOSOPHICAL  RATIONALISM; 
MADAME  NECKER  DE  SAUSSURE  (1765-1841)  J  MADAME  NECKER  DE 
SAUSSURE  AND  MADAME  DE  STAEL  J  PROGRESSIVE  EDUCATION  AND 
ROUSSEAU;  ORIGINALITY  OF  MADAME  NECKER  DE  SAUSSURE;  DIVIS- 
ION OF  PROGRESSIVE  EDUCATION  J  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  FACUL- 
TIES ;  CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION;  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN'; 
MADAME  PAPE-CARPENTIER  (1815-1878)  J  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF 
HER  WORKS  J  PRINCIPAL  WORKS  OF  MADAME  PAPE-CAKPENTIER  J 
OBJECT  LESSONS  J  OTHER  WOMEN  WHO  WERE  EDUCATORS  J  DU- 
PANLOUP  AND  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN  J  ANALYTICAL  SUM- 
MARY. 


562.  WOMEN  AS  EDUCATORS.  —  One  of  the  characteristic 
features  of  the  pedagogy  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  the 
constant  progress  in  the  education  of  women.  Woman  will 
be  better  instructed,  and  at  the  same  time  she  will  phiy  a 
more  important  part  in  instruction.  Primary  schools  for  girls 
did  not  exist,  so  to  speak,  in  France,  at  the  commencement 
of  this  century.  Fourcroy,  who  reported  the  bill  of  May  1, 
1802,  declared  that  "the  law  makes  no  mention  of  girls." 
But  through  the  efforts  of  the  monarchy  of  July,  and  still 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  479 

more  of  the  liberal  laws  of  the  second  and  of  the  third  Repub- 
lic, the  primary  instruction  of  girls  will  become  more  and 
more  general.  Secondary  public  instruction  will  be  created 
for  women  by  the  law  of  December  20,  1880,  and  the  equality 
of  the  two  sexes,  in  respect  of  education,  will  tend  more  and 
more  to  become  a  reality,  through  the  influence  of  govern- 
mental action  as  well  as  that  of  private  initiative. 

But  not  less  remarkable  is  the  important  part  which  women, 
by  their  abstract  reflections  or  by  their  practical  efforts,  have 
taken  in  the  progress  of  pedagogy.  In  the  history  of  educa- 
tion, the  nineteenth  century  will  be  noted  for  the  great  num- 
ber of  its  women  who  were  educators,  some  who  were  real 
philosophers  and  distinguished  writers,  and  others,  zealous 
aud  enthusiastic  teachers. 

563.  MADAME  DE  GENLIS  (1746-1830).  —  While  she  does 
not  belong  to  the  njneteenth  century  by  her  pedagogical 
writings,  Madame  de  Genlis  has  certain  rights  to  a  foremost 
place  in  the  list  of  the  educational  women  of  our  time.  She 
had  in  the  highest  degree  the  pedagogic  vocation ;  only,  that 
vocation  became  a  mania  and  was  squandered  on  everything. 
Madame  de  Genlis  wished  to  know  everything  in  order  that 
she  might  teach  everything.  "  She  was  more  than  a  woman 
author,"  says  Sainte-Beuve,  wittily ;  "  she  was  a  woman 
teacher ;  she  was  born  with  the  sign  on  her  forehead." 

Young  girls  of  their  own  accord  play  mamma  with  their 
dolls.  From  the  age  of  seven,  Madame  de  Genlis  played 
teacher. 

"  I  had  a  taste  for  teaching  children,  and  I  became  school- 
mistress in  a  curious  way.  .  .  .  Little  boys  from  the  village 
came  under  the  window  of  my  parents'  countiy-seat  to  play. 
I  amused  myself  in  watching  them,  and  I  soon  took  it  into 
my  head  to  give  them  lessons." 


480  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Twenty  years  later,  the  village  teacher  became  the  gov- 
erness of  the  daughters  of  the  Duchesse  de  Chartres,  and  the 
governor  of  the  sons  of  the  Duke  de  Chartres  (Philippe- 
Egalite"). 

564.  PEDAGOGICAL    WORKS.  —  The    principal    work    of 
Madame  de  Genlis,  Letters  on  Education   (1782),  treats  of 
the  education  of  princes  and  also  of  "  that  of  young  persons 
and  of  men."     In  giving  it  that  other  title,  Acttle  and  Theo- 
dore, the  author  indicated  her  intention  of  rivaling  Rousseau, 
and  of  educating  a  man  and  a  woman  more  perfect  than 
E\nile  and  Sophie. 

Although  she  had  a  profoundly  aristocratic  nature,  Madame 
de  Genlis,  after  the  revolution  of  1789,  seemed  for  an  instant 
to  follow  the  liberal  current  which  was  sweeping  minds  along. 
It  was  then  that  she  published  the  Counsels  on  the  Education 
of  the  Dauphin,  and  some  parts  of  her  educational  journal, 
entitled  Lessons  of  a  Governess.  She  never  ceased  to  preach 
love  of  the  people  to  sovereigns,  and  in  justice  this  must  be 
said  to  her  credit,  that  she  did  not  write  merely  for  courtly 
people.  She  protests,  and  with  spirit,  "  that  she  is  the  first 
author  who  has  concerned  herself  with  the  education  of  the 
people.  This  glory,"  she  adds,  "  is  dear  to  my  heart."  In 
support  of  these  assertions,  Madame  de  Genlis  cites  the 
fourth  volume  of  her  Thedtre  d'education,  which  is,  she  says, 
"  solely  intended  for  the  children  of  tradesmen  and  artisans  ; 
domestics  and  peasants  will  there  see  a  detailed  account  of 
their  obligations  and  their  duties." 

565.  ENCYCLOPAEDIC  EDUCATION. — It  has  been  said  with 
reason  that  Madame  de  Genlis  was  the  personification  of 
encyclopaedic  instruction.1 

1  Greard,  Memoire  sur  I' enseit/nement  secondaire  desfilles,  p.  78. 


WOMEN    AS    EDUCATORS.  481 

"  Her  programme  of  instruction  had  no  limits.  She  favors 
Latin,  without,  however,  thinking  the  knowledge  of  it  indis- 
pensable. She  gives  a  large  place  to  the  living  languages. 
At  Saint  Leu,  her  pupils  garden  in  German,  dine  in  English, 
and  sup  in  Italian.  At  the  same  time  she  invents  gymnastic 
apparatus,  —  pulleys,  baskets,  wooden  beds,  lead  shoes. 
Nothing  takes  her  at  unawares,  her  over-facile  pen  stops  at 
nothing;  she  is  universal.  A  plan  for  a  rural  school  for 
children  in  the  country  is  wanted,  and  she  furnishes  it." 

566.  IMITATION  OF  ROUSSEAU. — Madame  de  Genlis  never 
ceased  to  criticise  Rousseau,  and  yet,  in  her  educational 
romances,  the  inspiration  of  Rousseau  is  everywhere  present. 
How  can  we  fail  to  recognize  a  pupil  of  Rousseau  in  the 
father  of  Adele  and  Theodore,  who  leaves  Paris  in  order  to 
devote  himself  entirely  to  the  education  of  his  children,  to 
make  himself  "  their  governor  and  their  friend,  and  finally, 
to  screen  the  infancy  of  his  son  and  daughter  from  the  exam- 
ples of  vice  "  ?  And  the  methods  manufactured  by  Rousseau, 
the  unforeseen  lessons,  the  indirect  means  employed  to  in- 
struct without  having  the  appearance  of  doing  so,  —  Madame 
de  Genlis  desires  no  others.  Nothing  is  more  amusing  than 
the  description  of  the  country-seat  of  the  Baron  d'Almane, 
the  father  of  Adele  and  Theodore.  It  is  no  longer  a  country- 
seat  ;  it  is  a  school-house.  The  walls  are  no  longer  walls  ; 
they  are  charts  of  history  and  maps  of  geography. 

"  When  we  would  have  our  children  study  history  accord- 
ing to  a  chronological  order,  we  start  from  1113-  bed-chamber, 
which  represents  sacred  history ;  from  there  we  enter  my 
gallery,  where  we  find  ancient  history  ;  we  reach  the  parlor, 
which  contains  Roman  history,  and  we  end  with  the  gallery 
of  Monsieur  d'Almane  (it  is  the  Baroness  who  speaks),  where 
is  found  the  history  of  France." 


482  THE  HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

In  her  pedagogic  fairyland,  Madame  de  Genlis  does  not 
wish  the  child  to  meet  a  single  object  which  may  not  be 
transformed  into  an  instrument  of  instruction.  A  dele  and 
Theodore  cannot  take  a  hand-screen  without  finding  a  geog- 
raphy lesson  represented  on  it,  and  drawn  out  at  full  length. 
Here  are  pictures  worked  in  tapestry ;  they  are  historical 
scenes ;  on  the  back  of  them  care  has  been  taken  to  write 
an  explanation  of  what  they  represent.  At  least,  those  five 
or  six  movable  partitions  which  are  displayed  in  the  apart- 
ment on  cold  days  have  no  instructive  purposes?  You  are 
mistaken.  There  is  painted  and  written  on  them  the  history 
of  England,  of  Spain,  of  Germany,  and  that  of  the  Moors 
and  the  Turks.  Even  in  the  dining-room,  mythology  encum- 
bers the  panels  of  the  room,  and  "  it  usually  forms  the  sub- 
ject of  conversation  during  the  dinner."  In  that  castle, 
bewitched,  so  to  speak,  by  the  elf  of  history,  there  is  not  a 
glance  that  is  lost,  not  a  minute  without  its  lesson,  not  a 
corner  where  one  may  waste  his  time  in  dreaming.  History 
pursues  you  like  a  ghost,  like  a  nightmare,  along  the  corri- 
dors, on  the  stairs,  even  on  the  carpet  on  which  you  tread, 
and  on  the  chairs  upon  which  you  sit.  The  true  way  to 
disgust  a  child  forever  with  historical  studies  is  to  condemn 
him  to  live  for  eight  days  in  this  house-school  of  Madame  de 
Genlis. 

567.  Miss  EDGEWORTH  (1767-1849). —It  is  with  the 
Scotch  philosophy  and  the  psychological  theories  of  Reid  and 
Dngald  Stewart,  that  were  inspired  in  different  degrees  two 
distinguished  women,  who  honored  English  pedagogy  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century,  —  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Miss  Ham- 
ilton. 

In  her  book  on  Practical  Education,  published  in   17'.'s.' 

1  French  translation  by  Pictet,  1801. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  483 

Miss  Edgeworth  does  not  lose  herself  in  theoretical  disserta- 
tions. Her  book  is  a  collection  of  facts,  observations,  and 
precepts.  The  first  chapter  treats  of  toys,  and  the  author 
justifies  this  beginning  by  saying  that  in  education  there  is 
nothing  trivial  and  minute.  It  is  first  by  conversations,  and 
then  by  the  use  of  the  inventive,  analytical,  and  intuitive 
method,  that  Miss  Edgeworth  proposes  to  train  her  pupils  ; 
and  her  reflections  on  intellectual  education  deserve  to  be 
considered.  In  moral  education  she  agrees  with  Locke,  and 
seems  to  place  great  reliance  on  the  sentiment  of  honor,  and 
on  the  love  of  reputation.  In  every  case  she  absolutely 
ignores  the  religions  feeling.  The  characteristic  of  her  sys- 
tem is  that  it  makes  "  a  total  abstraction  of  religious  ideas." 

568.  Miss  HAMILTON  (1758-1816).  —  Miss  Hamilton  is 
at  once  more  philosophical  and  more  Christian  than  Miss 
Edgeworth.  It  is  from  the  psychologist  Hartley  that  she 
borrows  her  essential  principle,  which  consists  in  making  of 
the  association  of  ideas  the  basis  of  education.  Hartley  saw 
in  this  the  sovereign  law  of  intellectual  development.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  she  declares  "  that  she  follows  no  other 
guide  than  the  precepts  of  the  Gospel." 

The  principal  work  of  Miss  Hamilton,  her  Letters  on  the 
Elementary  Principles  of  Education  (1801  ),*  has  a  more 
theoretical  character  than  the  book  of  Miss  Edgeworth. 
With  her  it  is  above  all  else  a  question  of  principles,  which, 
she  says,  are  more  necessary  than  rules.  We  find  but  few 
reflections  on  teaching  proper.  She  borrows  the  very  words 
of  Dugald  Stewart  to  define  the  object  of  education  :  — 

"The  most  essential  objects  of  education  are  the  follow- 
ing :  first,  to  cultivate  all  the  various  principles  of  our  nature, 
both  speculative  and  active,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  bring 

1  French  translation  by  Chc'ron,  2  vols.,  Paris,  1804. 


484  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

them  to  the  greatest  perfection  of  which  they  are  suscepti- 
ble ;  and  secondly,  by  watching  over  the  impressions  and 
associations  which  the  mind  receives  in  early  life,  to  secure 
it  against  the  influence  of  prevailing  errors ;  and,  as  far 
as  possible,  to  engage  its  prepossessions  on  the  side  of 
truth." l 

To  cultivate  the  intellectual  and  moral  faculties,  Miss 
Hamilton  places  her  chief  dependence,  as  we  have  said,  on 
the  principle  of  the  association  .of  ideas.  We  must  break  up, 
or,  rather,  prevent  from  being  formed,  all  false  associations, 
that  is,  all  inaccurate  judgments.  Order  once  re-established 
among  ideas,  the  will  will  be  upright,  and  the  conduct  well 
regulated.  In  other  terms,  this  was  to  subordinate,  perhaps 
too  completely,  the  development  of  the  moral  faculties  to  the 
culture  of  the  intellectual  faculties. 

"  It  is  evident,"  says  Miss  Hamilton,  "  that  all  our  desires 
are  in  accord  with  ideas  of  pleasure,  and  all  our  aversions 
with  ideas  of  pain." 

The  educator  will  then  try  to  associate  the  idea  of  pleasure 
with  what  is  good  and -useful  for  the  child  and  for  the  man. 

Let  us  also  note,  in  passing,  the  solicitude  of  Miss  Hamil- 
ton for  the  education  of  the  people  :  — 

"  From  most  of  the  writers  on  education  it  would  appear 
that  it  is  only  to  people  of  rank  and  fortune  that  education 
is  a  matter  of  any  importance.  .  .  .  My  plan  has  for  its 
object  the  cultivation  of  the  faculties  that  are  common  to  the 
whole  human  race."  : 

On  this  point  her  thought  was  the  same  as  that  of  Miss 
Edgeworth,  whose  father,  in  1799,  in  the  Irish  Parliament, 
had  caused  the  adoption  of  the  first  law  on  primary  instruc- 
tion. 

1  Stewart,  Elements,  p.  11. 

2  Letters,  Vol.  I.  p.  11. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  485 

5G9.  MADAME  CAMPAN  (1752-1822). — Twenty -five  years' 
experience,  either  at  the  court  of  Louis  XV.,  or  in  the  school 
at  Saint-Germain,  which  she  founded  under  the  Revolution, 
or  finally  in  the  institution  at  F^couen,  the  direction  of  which 
was  entrusted  to  her  by  Napoleon  I.,  in  1807,  —  such  are  the 
claims  which  at  once  assure  to  Madame  Carnpan  some  author- 
ity on  pedagogical  questions.1  Let  us  add  that  good  sense, 
a  methodical  and  prudent  mind,  —  in  a  word,  qualities  which 
were  reasonable  rather  than  brilliant, — directed  that  long 
personal  experience. 

"  First  I  saw,"  she  said,  "  then  I  reflected,  and  finally  I 
wrote." 

570.  EULOGY  ON  HOME  EDUCATION. — From  a  teacher, 
from  the  directress  of  a  school,  we  would  expect  prejudices 
in  favor  of  public  education  in  boarding-schools.  That  which 
secures  our  ready  confidence,  is  that  Madame  Campan,  on 
the  contrary,  appreciates  better  than  any  one  else  the  advan- 
tages of  maternal  education  :  — 

"  To  create  mothers,"  she  said,  "  this  is  the  whole  educa- 
tion of  women."  Nothing  seems  to  her  superior  to  a  mother 
governess  "  who  does  not  keep  late  hours,  who  rises  betimes," 
who,  finally,  devotes  herself  resolutely  to  the  important  dut}" 
with  which  she  is  charged. 

"  There  is  no  boarding-school,  however  well  it  may  be  con- 
ducted, there  is  no  convent,  however  pious  its  government 
may  be,  which  can  give  an  education  comparable  to  that 
which  a  young  girl  receives  from  a  mother  who  is  edu- 
cated, and  who  finds  her  sweetest  occupation  and  her  true 
glory  in  the  education  of  her  daughter." 

Madame  Campan,  moreover,  reminds  mothers  who  would 

1  See  the  two  volumes  published  in  1824  by  Barriere,  on  the  Education, 
par  Madame  Campan,  followed  by  the  Conseils  auxjeunesfilles. 


486  THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

be  the  teachers  of  their  own  daughters,  of  all  the  obligations 
which  are  involved  in  such  a  charge.  Too  often  the  mother 
who  jealously  keeps  her  daughter  near  her,  is  not  capable  of 
educating  her.  In  this  case  there  is  only  the  appearance  of 
home  education,  and  as  Madame  Campan  wittily  says,  •'  this 
is  no  longer  maternal  education;  it  is  but  education  at 
home." 

571.  PROGRESS  IN  INSTRUCTION.  —  F£nelon  was  Madame 
Campau's  favorite  author.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was 
some  resemblance  between  the  rules  of  the  school  at  Ecoueu 
and  those  of  Saint  Cyr.  The  spirit  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury lives  again  in  the  educational  institutions  of  the  nine- 
teenth, and  Madame  Campan  continues  the  work  of  Madame 
de  Maiutenon. 

However,  there  is  progress  in  more  than  one  respect,  and 
the  instruction  is  more  solid  and  more  complete. 

"The  purpose  of  education,"  wrote  Madame  Campan  to 
the  Emperor,  "  ought  to  be  directed  :  1.  towards  the  domes- 
tic virtues  ;  2.  towards  instruction,  to  such  a  degree  of  per- 
fection in  the  knowledge  of  language,  computation,  history, 
writing,  and  geography,  that  all  pupils  shall  be  assured  of 
the  happiness  of  being  able  to  instruct  their  own  daughters." 

Madame  Campan  desired,  moreover,  to  extend  her  work. 
She  demanded  of  the  Emperor  the  creation  of  several  public 
establishments  "  for  educating  the  daughters  of  certain  classes 
of  the  servants  of  the  State."  She  desired  that  the  govern- 
ment should  take  under  its  supervision  private  institutions, 
and  contemplated  for  women  as  for  men  a  sort  of  university 
"  which  might  replace  the  convents  and  the  colleges."  But 
Napoleon  was  not  the  man  to  enter  into  these  schemes.  The 
schools  of  "  women-logicians  "  were  scarcely  to  his  taste, 
and  the  teaching  congregations,  which  he  restored  to  their 
privileges,  the  better  served  his  purpose. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  487 

572.  INTEREST  IN  POPULAR  EDUCATION.  —  One  might  be- 
lieve  that  Madame  Campau,  who  had  begun  by  being  the 
teacher  of  the  three  daughters  of  Louis  XV.,  and  who  asso- 
ciated with  scarcely  any  save  the  wealthy  or  the  titled,  had 
never  had  the  taste  or  the  leisure  to  think  of  popular  instruc- 
tion.    It  is  nothing  of  the  sort,  as  is  proved  by  her  Counsels 
to  Young  Girls,  a  work  intended  for  Elementary  Schools. 

"  There  is  no  ground  for  fearing  that  the  daughters  of  the 
rich  will  ever  be  in  want  of  books  to  instruct  them  or  of 
governesses  to  direct  them.  It  is  not  at  all  so  with  the  chil- 
dren who  belong  to  the  less  fortunate  classes.  ..."  I  have 
seen  with  my  own  eyes  how  incomplete  and  neglected  is  the 
education  of  the  daughters  of  country  people.  ...  It  is  for 
them  that  I  have  penned  this  little  work." 

The  work  itself  has  not  perhaps  the  tone  that  could  be  de- 
sired, nor  all  the  simplicity'  that  the  author  would  have  wished 
to  give  it ;  but  we  must  thank  Madame  Campan  for  her  in- 
tentions, and  we  count  among  her  highest  claims  to  the 
esteem  of  posterity  the  effort  which  she  made  in  her  old  age 
to  become,  at  least  in  her  writings,  a  simple  school-mistress 
and  a  village  teacher. 

573.  MADAME  DE  REMUSAT    (1780-1821). — Madame  de 
Re"musat  has  written  only  for  women  of  the  world.     Herself 
a  woman  of  the  world,  lady  of  the  palace  of  the  Empress 
Josephine,  she  had  no  personal  experience  in  the  way  of 
teaching.     She  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  practice  of  educa- 
tion save  in  supervising  the  studies  of  her  two  sons,  one  of 
whom  became  a  philosopher  and  an  illustrious  statesman, 
Charles  de  Re'musat.     The  noble  book  of  Madame  de  Re"mu- 
sat,  her  Essay  on  the  Education  of  Women,  does  not  commend 
itself  by  reason  of  its  detailed  precepts  and  scholastic  meth- 
ods, but  by  its  lofty  reflections  and  general  principles.1 

1  The  work  of  Madame  de  Remusat  was  published  in  1824,  after  tha  au- 
thor's death,  under  the  direction  of  Charles  de  Re'musat. 


488  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

574.  SKETCH  OF  FEMININE  PSYCHOLOGY.  —  Let  us  first 
notice  different  passages  in  which  the  author  sketches  by  a 
few  touches  the  psychology  of  woraan,  and  determines  her 
sphere  in  life  :  — 

"Woman  is  the  companion  of  man  upon  the  earth,  but 
yet  she  exists  on  her  own  account ;  she  is  inferior,  but  not 
subordinate." 

The  expression  here  betrays  Madame  de  Re"nuisat,  and  it 
would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  woman  is  not  inferior  to 
man,  that  she  is  his  equal,  but  that  in  existing  civil  and  so- 
cial conditions  she  necessarily  remains  subordinate  to  him. 

But  with  what  perfect  justness  the  amiable  writer  charac- 
terizes the  peculiar  qualities  of  woman  ! 

"We  lack  continuity  and  depth  when  we  would  apply 
ourselves  to  general  questions.  Endowed  with  a  quick  in- 
telligence, we  hear  promptly,  we  even  divine  and  see  just  as 
well  as  men ;  but  too  easily  moved  to  remain  impartial,  too 
mobile  to  be  profound,  perceiving  is  easier  for  us  than  observ- 
ing. Prolonged  attention  wearies  us  ;  we  are,  in  short,  more 
mild  than  patient.  More  sensitive  and  more  devoted  than 
men,  women  are  ignorant  of  that  sort  of  selfishness  which 
an  independent  being  exhibits  outwardly  as  a  consciousness 
of  his  own  power.  To  obtain  from  them  any  activity  what- 
ever, it  is  almost  always  necessary  to  interest  them  hi  tits 
happiness  of  another.  Their  very  faults  are  the  outgrowths 
of  their  condition.  The  same  cause  will  excite  in  man 
emotions  of  pride,  and  in  woman  only  those  of  vanity." 

575.  THE  SERIOUS  IN  EDUCATION.  — Madame  de  Remnsnt. 
still  more  than.  Madame  Campan,  belongs  to  the  modern 
school.  She  desires  for  woman  an  education  serious  and 
grave. 

"  I  see  no  reason  for  treating  women  less  seriously  than 


WOMEN  AS   EDUCATORS.  489 

men,  for  misrepresenting  truth  to  them  under  the  form  of  a 
prejudice,  duty  under  the  appearance  of  a  superstition,  in 
order  that  they  may  accept  both  the  duty  and  the  truth." 

She  does  not  in  the  least  incline  to  the  opinion  of  the  over- 
courteous  moralist  Joubert,  who,  with  more  gallantry  than  real 
respect  for  women,  said  :  "  Nothing  too  earthly  or  too  mate- 
rial ought  to  employ  young  ladies  ;  only  delicate  material  should 
busy  their  hands.  .  .  .  They  resemble  the  imagination,  and 
like  it  they  should  touch  only  the  surface  of  things."  l 

Madame  de  R£rnusat  enters  into  the  spirit  of  her  time,  and 
her  admiration  for  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  does  not  make  her 
forget  what  she  owes  to  the  new  society,  transformed  by 
great  political  reforms. 

"We  are  drawing  near  the  time  when  ever\-  Frenchman 
shall  be  a  citizen.  In  her  turn,  the  destiny  of  woman  is 
comprised  in  these  two  terms  :  wife  and  mother  of  a  citizen. 
There  is  much  morality,  and  a  very  severe  and  touching 
morality,  in  the  idea  which  ought  to  be  attached  to  that  word 
citizen.  After  religion,  I  do  not  know  a  more  powerful  mo- 
tive than  the  patriotic  spirit  for  directing  the  young  towards 
the  good." 

It  is  no  longer  a  question,  then,  of  training  the  woman  and 
the  man  for  themselves,  for  their  individual  destiny.  They 
must  be  educated  for  the  public  good,  for  their  duties  in 
society.  Madame  de  Re'musat  is  not  one  of  those  timid 
and  frightened  women  who  feel  a  homesickness  for  the  past, 
whom  the  present  terrifies.  Liberal  and  courageous,  she 
manfully  accepts  the  new  regime  ;  she  proclaims  its  advan- 
tages, and,  if  she  writes  like  a  woman  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  almost  with  the  perfection  of  Madame  de  SeVigne", 
her  chosen  model,  she  at  least  thinks  like  a  daughter  of  the 
Revolution. 

1  Joubert,  Pensees. 


490  THE   HISTORY  OF    PEDAGOGY. 

576.  PHILOSOPHICAL  SPIRIT.  — That  which  is  not  less  re- 
markable is  the  philosophical  character  of  her  reflections. 
She  believes  in  liberty  and  in  conscience.     It  is  conscience 
which   she  purposes   to   substitute,  as  a   moral   rule,  "  for 
despotic  and  superficial  caprices."     It  is  no  longer  by  the 
imperative  term,  you  must,  but  by  the  obligatory  term,  you 
ought,  that  the  mother  should  lead  and  govern  her  daughter. 

"  On  every  occasion  let  these  words,  I  ought,  re-appear  in 
the  conversation  of  the  mother." 

This  is  saying  that  the  child  ought  to  be  treated  as  a  free 
being.  The  end,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  efficient 
means,  of  education,  is  the  wise  employment  of  liberty. 
While  keeping  the  oversight  of  the  child,  he  must  be  left  to 
take  care  of  himself,  and  on  many  occasions  to  follow  the 
course  that  he  will.  By  this  means  his  will  will  be  developed, 
and  his  character  strengthened  ;  and  this  is  an  essential  point 
according  to  Madame  de  R£musat. 

"If  under  Louis  XIV.,"  she  says,  "the  education  of 
woman's  mind  was  grave  and  often  substantial,  that  of  her 
character  remained  imperfect." 

577.  MADAME   GUIZOT  (1773-1827).  —  Madame    Guizot 
first  became  known    under   her   maiden   name,  Pauline  de 
Meulan.     In  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  she 
had  written  several  romances,  and  had  contributed  to  the  re- 
view of  Suard,  the  Publiciste.     In  1812  she  married  Guizot, 
the  future  author  of  the  law  of  1833,  who  had  just  founded 
the  Annals  of  Education.1     From  this  period,  all  her  ideas 
and    all    her    writings    were    directed     almost    exclusively 


1  The  Annales  de  V education  appeared  from  1811  to  1814.  It  is  an  inter- 
esting collection  to  consult.  In  it  Guizot  published  among  other  pedagog- 
ical works,  his  studies  on  the  ideas  of  Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  afterwards 
reprinted  in  the  volume,  Etudes  Morales. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  491 

towards  ethics  and  education.  She  published  in  succession, 
Children  (1812),  Raonl  and  Victor  (1821),  and,  finally,  her 
masterpiece,  the  Family  Letters  on  Education  (1826). 

578.  THE  LETTERS  ON  EDUCATION.  —  To  give  at  once  an 
idea  of  the  merit  of  this  book,1  we  shall  quote  the  opinion  of 
Sainte-Beuve :  — 

"The  work  of  Madame  Guizot  will  survive  the  Emile, 
marking  in  this  line  the  progress  of  the  sound,  temperate, 
and  refined  reason  of  our  times,  over  the  venturesome  genius 
of  Rousseau,  just  as  in  politics  the  Democratie  of  DeTocque- 
ville  is  an  advance  over  the  Contrat  Social.  Essential  to 
meditate  upon,  as  advice,  in  all  education  which  would  pre- 
pare strong  men  for  the  difficulties  of  our  modern  society, 
this  book  also  contains,  in  the  way  of  exposition,  the  noblest 
moral  pages,  the  most  sincere  and  the  most  convincing, 
which,  with  a  few  pages  from  Jouffroy,  have  been  suggested 
to  the  philosophy  of  our  age  by  the  doctrines  of  a  spiritual- 
istic rationalism." 

579.  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OPTIMISM.  —  The  philosophical  spirit 
is  not  lacking  in  the  Letters  on  Education.     The  whole  of 
Letter  XII.  is  a  plea  in  behalf  of  the  relative  innocence  of 
the  child.     That  which  is  bad  in  the  disorderly  inclination, 
says  the  author,  is  not  the  inclination,  but  the  disorder :  — 

"The  inclinations  of  a  sentient  being  are  in  themselves 
what  they  ought  to  be.  It  has  been  said  that  a  man  could 
not  be  virtuous  if  he  did  not  conquer  his  inclinations  ;  hence, 
his  inclinations  are  evil.  This  is  an  error.  No  more  could 
the  tree  produce  good  fruit,  if,  in  pruning  it,  the  disorderly 
flow  of  the  sap  were  not  arrested.  Does  this  prove  that  the 
sap  is  harmful  to  the  tree  ?  " 

1  Education  domestique  ou  Lettres  de  famille  sur  Vtducation.    2  vols. 
Paris,  1820. 


492  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

It  follows  from  these  principles  that  discipline  ought  not 
to  be  severe. 

"  Do  you  not  think  it  strange,"  exclaims  Madame  Guizot, 
''that  for  centuries  education  has  been,  so  to  speak,  a  sys- 
tematic hostility  against  human  nature ;  that  to  correct  and 
to  punish  have  been  synonymous  ;  and  that  we  have  heard 
only  of  dispositions  to  break,  and  natures  to  overcome,  just 
as  though  it  were  a  question  of  taking  away  from  children 
the  nature  which  God  has  given  them  in  order  to  give  them 
another  such  as  teachers  would  have  it  ?  " 

f>80.  NATURE  OF  THE  CHILD. — That  which  gives  a  great 
vah.e  to  the  work  of  Madame  Guizot  is,  that  besides  the 
general  considerations  and  the  philosophical  reflections,  we 
there  find  a  great  number  of  circumstantial  experiences  and 
detailed  observations  which  are  admissible  in  a  sound  trea- 
tise on  pedagogy.  Like  the  psychology  of  the  child,  peda- 
gogy itself,  at  least  in  its  first  chapters,  ought  to  be  conci-ivt-d 
and  written  near  a  cradle.  Madame  Guizot  forcibly  indi- 
cates the  importance  of  the  first  years,  where  the  future  des- 
tin\'  of  the  child  is  determined  :  "  In  those  imperfect  organs. 
in  that  incomplete  intelligence,  are  contained,  from  the  first 
moment  of  existence,  the  germs  of  that  which  is  ever  more, 
to  proceed  from  them  either  for  better  or  for  worse.  The 
man  will  never  have,  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  an  im- 
pulse which  does  not  belong  to  that  nature,  all  the  features 
of  which  are  already  foreshadowed  in  the  infant.  The  infant 
will  never  receive  a  keen  and  durable  impression,  however 
slight,  an  impress  of  whatever  kind,  whose  effects  are  not  to 
influence  the  life  of  the  man." 

At  the  same  time  that  she  sees  in  the  infant  the  rough 
draft  of  the  man,  Madame  Guizot  recognizes  with  a  remark- 
able delicac}'  of  psychologic  sense,  that  which  distinguishes, 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  493 

that  which  characterizes,  the  irreflective  and  inconsiderate 
nature  of  the  child.  What  is  more  just  than  this  observation  ? 

"We  often  deceive  ourselves  in  attributing  to  the  conduct 
of  children,  because  it  is  analogous  to  our  own,  motives 
similar  to  those  which  guide  ourselves." 

What  better  observation  than  the  example  which  Madame 
Guizot  cites  in  support  of  this  statement ! 

"  Louise,  by  a  sudden  impulse,  drops  her  toys,  throws 
herself  upon  my  neck,  and  cannot  cease  kissing  me.  It 
seems  that  all  my  mother's  heart  could  not  sufficiently 
respond  to  the  warmth  of  her  caresses  ;  but  by  the  same 
playful  impulse  she  leaves  me  to  kiss  her  doll  or  the  arm  of 
the  chair  which  she  meets  on  her  way." 

581.  PHILOSOPHIC  RATIONALISM.  —  Madame  Guizot  pushes 
rationalism  much  farther  than  Madame  de  Remusat,  and  still 
farther  than  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure.  She  is  first  a 
philosopher,  then  a  Christian.  She  more  nearly  approaches 
Rousseau.  She  would  first  form  in  the  minds  of  children  the 
universal  idea  of  God  before  initiating  them  into  the  particular 
dogmas  of  positive  religions.  She  bases  morals  on  the  idea 
of  duty,  which  is  "  the  only  basis  of  a  complete  education." 

"  I  would  place,"  she  says,  "  each  act  of  the  child  under 
the  protection  of  an  idea  or  of  a  moral  sentiment." 

Recalling  the  distinction  made  by  Dupont  de  Nemours 
between  paternal  commands  and  military  commands,  the 
first  addressing  themselves  to  the  reason,  the  others  to  be 
observed  without  protest  and  with  a  passive  obedience,  she 
does  not  conceal  her  preference  for  the  use  of  the  first, 
because  she  would  form  in  the  woman,  as  in  the  man,  a  spirit 
of  reason  and  of  liberty.  She  absolutely  proscribes  personal 
interest,  and  hence  declares  that  "  rewards  have  always 
seemed  to  her  contrary  to  the  true  principle  of  education." 


494  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Let  us  say,  lastly,  without  being  able  to  enter  into  detail, 
that  the  book  of  Madame  Guizot  deserves  to  be  read  with 
care.  There  will  be  found  in  it  a  great  number  of  excellent 
reflections  on  instruction  which  ought  to  be  substantial 
rather  than  extensive  ;  upon  the  reading  of  romances,  and 
upon  the  theatre,  which  she  does  not  forbid ;  upon  easy 
methods,  which  she  condemns ;  and,  finally,  on  almost  all 
pedagogical  questions.1 

582.  MADAME  NECKER  DE  SAUSSURE  (1765-1841). — 
There  are  in  the  history  of  education  privileged  moments, 
periods  that  are  particularly  and  happily  fruitful.  It  is  thus 
that  within  the  space  of  a  few  years  there  appeared  in  suc- 
cession the  books  of  Madame  de  Remusat,  of  Madame 
Guizot,  and,  the  most  important  of  all,  the  Progressive  Edu- 
cation of  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure.2 

A  native  of  Geneva,  like  Rousseau,  Madame  Necker  de 
Saussure  has  endowed  French  literature  with  an  educational 
masterpiece,  which  for  elevation  of  view  and  nobleness  of 
inspiration,  can  take  rank  by  the  side  of  the  Emile.  Though 
she  may  sometimes  be  too  logical  and  too  austere,  and  while 
in  general  she  is  lacking  in  good  humor,  and  while  she  looks 
upon  life  only  through  a  veil  of  sadness,  Madame  Necker  is 
an  incomparable  guide  in  educational  affairs.  She  brings  to 
the  subject  remarkable  qualities  of  perspicacity  and  penetra- 
tion, and  a  spirit  of  marked  gravity.  She  takes  a  serious 
view  of  life,  and  applies  herself  to  training  the  noblest  quali- 
ties of  the  human  soul.  Profoundly  religious,  she  unites  a 
"philosophical  boldness  to  the  submission  of  faith."  She 
is,  in  some  measure,  a  Christian  Rousseau. 

1  See  in  the  Revue  pe'dagogique,  1883,  No.  6,  an  interesting  study  on 
Madame  Guizot,  by  Bernard  Perez. 

2  L' Education  progressive  ou  Etude  du  cours  de  la  nature  humaine. 
3  vols.     1836-1838. 


WOMEN   AS  EDUCATORS.  495 

583.  MADAME  NECKER  DE  SAUSSURE  AND  MADAME  DE 
STAEL.  —  The  first  work  of  Madame  Necker,  Notice  of  the 
Character  and  the  Writings  of  Madame  de  Stael,  already  gives 
proof  of  her  interest  in  education.  The  author  of  the  Pro- 
yressive  Education  here  studies  with  care  the  ideas  of  her 
heroine  on  education  and  instruction.  It  is  plain  that  she 
has  profited  by  some  of  the  solid  reflections  in  the  noble 
book  on  Germany,  and  particularly  by  this  opinion  on  the 
gradual  and  progressive  method  of  Rousseau  and  of  Pes- 
talozzi : — 

"Rousseau  calls  children  into  activity  by  degrees.  He 
would  have  them  do  for  themselves  all  that  their  little  powers 
permit  them  to  do.  He  does  not  in  the  least  force  their 
intelligence  ;  he  does  not  make  them  reach  the  result  with- 
out passing  over  the  route.  He  wishes  the  faculties  to  be 
developed  before  the  sciences  are  taught." 

"  What  wearies  children  is  to  make  them  jump  over  inter- 
mediate parts,  to  make  them  advance  without  their  really 
knowing  what  they  think  they  have  learned.  With  Pestalozzi 
there  is  no  trace  of  these  difficulties.  With  him,  children 
take  delight  in  their  studies,  because  even  in  infancy,  they 
taste  the  pleasure  of  grown  men,  namely,  comprehending 
and  completing  that  on  which  they  have  been  engaged." 

Moreover,  Madame  Necker  must  have  recognized  her  own 
spirit,  her  preference  for  a  severe  and  painstaking  educa- 
tion, in  this  passage  where  Madame  de  Stae'l  vigorously  pro- 
tested against  amusing  and  easy  methods  of  instruction  :  — 

"The  education  that  takes  place  through  amusement 
dissipates  thought ;  labor  of  some  sort  is  one  of  the  great 
aids  of  nature  ;  the  mind  of  the  child  ought  to  accustom 
itself  to  the  labor  of  stud}*,  just  as  our  soul  to  suffering.  .  .  . 
You  will  teach  a  multitude  of  things  to  your  child  by  means 
of  pictures  and  cards,  but  you  will  not  teach  him  how  to 
learn." 


496  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

584.  PROGRESSIVE  EDUCATION  AND  ROUSSEAU.  —  It  is 
undeniable  that  Madame  Necker  owes  much  to  Rousseau  ; 
but  she  is  far  from  always  agreeing  with  him. 

For  Rousseau,  man  is  good  ;  for  her,  man  is  bad.  The 
first  duty  of  the  teacher  should  be  to  reform  him,  to  raise 
him  from  his  fall ;  the  purpose  of  life  is  not  happiness,  as  an 
immoral  doctrine  maintains,  but  it  is  improvement ;  the  basis 
of  education  ought  to  be  religion. 

Even  when  she  is  inspired  by  Rousseau,  Madame  Necker 
is  not  long  in  separating  from  him.  Thus  we  may  believe 
that  she  borrows  from  him  the  fundamental  idea  of  her  book, 
the  idea  of  a  successive  development  of  the  faculties,  to 
which  should  correspond  a  parallel  movement  in  educational 
methods.  Like  the  author  of  the  Emile,  she  follows  the 
awakening  of  the  senses  in  the  infant.  She  considers  the 
infant  as  a  being  sui  generis  "  who  lives  only  on  sensations 
and  desires."  She  sees  in  the  infant  a  distinct  period  of  life, 
an  age  whose  education  has  its  own  special  rules.  But  at 
that  point  the  resemblances  stop ;  for  Madame  Necker  de 
Saussure  hastens  to  add  that,  from  the  fifth  year,  the  child 
is  in  possession  of  all  his  intellectual  faculties.  He  is  no 
longer  simply  a  sentient  being,  a  robust  animal  like  Emile  ; 
but  he  is  a  complete  being,  soul  and  body.  Consequently, 
education  should  take  account  of  his  double  nature.  Moral 
education  ought  not  to  be  separated  from  physical  education, 
and  cannot  begin  too  soon. 

"•  It  is  a  great  error  to  believe  that  nature  proceeds  in  the 
systematic  order  imagined  by  Rousseau.  With  her,  we 
nowhere  discern  a  commencement ;  we  do  not  surprise  her  at 
creating,  and  it  always  seems  that  she  is  developing." 

So,  in  education,  we  must  know  how  to  appeal,  at  the 
same  time  and  as  soon  as  possible,  to  the  different  motives, 
instinctive  or  reflective,  selfish  or  affectionate,  which  sway 
the  will. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  497 

Often,  in  practice,  the  two  thinkers  approach  each  other, 
and,  even  in  her  protestations  against  her  countryman, 
Madame  Necker  de  Saussure  preserves  something  of  Rous- 
seau's spirit.  Thus,  she  does  not  desire  the  negative  educa- 
tion which  leaves  everything  to  nature.  The  teacher  ought 
not  to  allow  the  child  to  do  (laisser  faire) ,  but  cause  him  to 
do  (faire  faire) .  But,  at  the  same  time,  she  demands  that 
the  will  be  strengthened,  so  that  education  may  find  in  it  a 
point  of  support ;  that  the  character  be  hardened  ;  that  some 
degree  of  independence  be  accorded  to  the  child;  "  that  in 
permissible  cases  he  be  allowed  to  come  to  his  own  decision  ; 
and  that  half-orders,  half -obligations,  tacit  entreaties,  and 
insinuations,  be  avoided."  Is  not  this  retaining  all  that  is 
just  and  practical  in  Rousseau's  theory,  namely,  the  necessity 
of  associating  the  special  and  spontaneous  powers  of  the 
child  with  the  work  of  education?  Madame  de  Saussure 
adopts  a  just  medium  between  the  active  education  which 
makes  a  misuse  of  the  master's  instruction,  and  the  passive 
education  which  makes  a  misuse  of  the  pupil's  liberty.  She 
would  willingly  have  accepted  this  precept  of  Froebel,  "  Let 
teachers  not  lose  sight  of  this  truth  :  it  is  necessary  that 
always  and  at  the  same  time  they  give  and  take,  that  they 
precede  and  follow,  that  they  act  and  let  act." 

585.  ORIGINALITY  OF  MADAME  NECKER.  —  Though  she  had 
reflected  much  on  the  writings  of  her  predecessors,  it  is  never- 
theless to  her  personal  experience  and  to  her  original  investi- 
gations that  Madame  Necker  owes  the  best  of  her  thought. 
She  had  herself  followed  the  advice  which  she  gives  to  moth- 
ers, of  "  observing  their  children,  and  of  keeping  a  journal, 
in  which  a  record  should  be  made  of  each  step  of  progress, 
and  in  which  all  the  vicissitudes  of  physical  and  moral  health 
should  be  noted."  It  is  a  rich  psychological  fund,  and  at  the 


498  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

same  time  a  perpetual  aspiration  after  the  ideal,  which  makes 
the  strength  and  the  beauty  of  the  Progressice  Education. 
With  what  penetrating  insight  Madame  Necker  has  pointed 
out  the  difficulty  and  also  the  charm  of  the  study  of  children  ! 

"  It  were  so  delightful  to  fix  the  fugitive  image  of  child- 
hood, to  prolong  indefinitely  the  happiness  of  contemplating 
their  features,  and  to  be  sure  of  ever  finding  again  those  dear 
creatures  whom,  alas,  we  are  alwaj-s  losing  as  children,  even 
when  we  still  have  the  happiness  of  keeping  them !  " 

"We  must  love  children  in  order  to  know  them,  and  we 
divine  them  less  by  the  intelligence  than  by  the  heart." 

Thanks  to  the  pronounced  taste  for  the  study  of  child 
nature,  the  most  just  ps3-chological  observations  are  ever 
mingled,  in  the  Progressive  Education,  with  the  precepts  of 
education,  and  it  has  been  truly  said  that  "this  book  is 
almost  a  journal  of  domestic  education  which  takes  the  pro- 
portions of  a  theory." 

586.  DIVISION   OF  THE   PROGRESSIVE   EDUCATION.  —  The 
Progressive  Education  appeared  in  1836  and  1838  in  three 
volumes.     The  first  three  books  treat  of  the  history  of  the 
soul  in  infancy  ;  the  fourth  examines  the  general  principles 
of  teaching,  independently  of  the  age  of  the  pupil ;  the  fifth 
studies  the  child  of  from  five  to  seven  years  of  age ;  the  sixth 
takes  us  to  the  tenth  year;  the  seventh  shows  "the  distinc- 
tive marks  of  the  character  and  the  intellectual  development 
of  boys,  during  the  years  which  immediately  precede  ado- 
lescence."     Finally,   the  last  four  books  form  a  complete 
whole,  and  treat  of  the  education  of  women  during  the  whole 
course  of  life. 

587.  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  FACULTIES.  —  We  cannot  at- 
tempt in  this  place  to  analyze  a  work  so  rich  in  ideas  as  the 
work  of  Madame  Necker.    Let  us  limit  ourselves  to  indicating 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  499 

the  essential  points  in  her  system  of  education.  First,  it  is 
the  preoccupation  of  training  the  will,  a  faculty  which  is  too 
much  neglected  by  teachers,  but  which,  nevertheless,  is  the 
endowment  which  dominates  life.  Madame  Necker  treats  this 
subject  in  a  masterly  way  in  a  chapter  to  which  she  prefixes 
these  words  as  a  superscription  :  — 

"  Obedience  to  law  constrains  the  will  without  enfeebling 
it,  while  obedience  to  man  injures  it  or  enervates  it. 

"It  is,  above  all,  to  place  the  interior  education  of  the 
soul  above  superficial  and  formal  instruction. 

"To  instruct  a  child  is  to  construct  him  within  ;  it  is  to 
make  him  become  a  man." 

588.  CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.  —  Whatever  impor- 
tance she  attaches  to  the  active  powers,  Madame  Necker  does 
not  neglect  the  contemplative  faculties.  The  imagination, 
next  to  the  will,  is  the  facult}"  of  the  soul  which  has  most 
often  engrossed  her  attention. 

"  She  has  made  it  appear,"  says  a  distinguished  writer, 
"  that  this  irresistible  power,  when  we  believe  it  to  have  been 
conquered,  takes  the  most  diverse  forms  ;  that  it  disguises 
its  power  and  arouses  with  a  secret  fire  the  most  miserable 
passions.  If  you  refuse  it  space  and  liberty,  it  slinks  away 
in  the  depths  of  selfishness,  and  under  vulgar  features  it 
becomes  avarice,  cowardice,  and  vanity." 

"So  it  is  necessary  to  see  with  what  tender  anxiety 
Madame  Necker  watches  its  first  movements  in  the  soul  of 
the  child  ;  with  what  intelligent  care  she  seeks  to  make  of  it 
from  entrance  upon  life,  the  companion  of  truth ;  how  she 
surrounds  it  with  everything  which  can  establish  it  within  the 
circle  of  the  good.  The  studies  which  extend  our  intellectual 
horizon,  the  spectacle  of  nature  in  her  marvelous  diversities, 
the  emotions  of  the  arts,  — nothing  seems  to  her  superfluous 


500  THE   HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

or  dangerous  for  directing  the  imagination  in  the  way  that  is 
good.  She  fears  to  see  it  escape,  through  the  lack  of  pleas- 
ures that  are  intense  enough,  in  the  direction  of  other  routes."1 

In  other  terms,  it  is  not  proposed  to  repress  the  imagina- 
tion, still  less  to  destroy  it;  but  merely  to  guide  it  gently, 
to  associate  it  with  reason  and  virtue,  to  awaken  it  to  a  taste 
for  the  good,  and  to  an  admiration  for  nature. 

"  Show  him  a  beautiful  sunset,  in  order  that  nothing  which 
can  enchant  him  may  pass  unnoticed." 

589.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  WOMEN. — In  her  special  studies 
on  the  education  of  women,  Madame  Necker,  who  in  other 
parts  of  her  work  sometimes  makes  an  improper  use  of  vague 
declarations  of  principles,  without  entering  sufficiently  into 
the  details  of  practical  processes,  has  had  the  double,  merit 
of  assigning  to  the  destiny  of  women  an  elevated  ideal,  and 
of  determining  with  precision  the  means  of  attaining  it. 
She  complains  that  we  too  often  adhere  to  Rousseau's  pro- 
gramme, that  of  an  education  which  relates  exclusively  to 
the  conjugal  duties  of  the  woman.  She  recommends  that  the 
marriage  of  young  girls  be  delayed,  so  that  they  may  have 
time  to  become  "enlightened  spirits  and  intelligent  crea- 
tures "  ;  so  that  they  may  acquire,  not  "  an  assortment  of  all 
petty  knowledges,"  but  a  solid  instruction,  which  prepares 
them  for  the  duties  of  society  and  of  maternity,  which  make 
of  them  the  first  teachers  of  their  children,  which,  in  a  word, 
starts  them  on  the  way  towards  that  personal  perfection 
which  they  will  never  completely  attain  except  by  the  efforts 
of  their  whole  life.2 

1  Preface  to  the  fifth  edition  of  the  Progressive  Education.  Paris. 
Gamier. 

-  We  must  include  in  the  educational  school  of  Madame  Xecker  de 
Saussure  one  of  her  countrymen,  the  celebrated  Vinet  (1799-1K47),  who,  in 
his  excellent  book,  L' Education,  la  famille  et  la  soci€t£  (Paris,  1855),  has 
vigorously  discussed  certain  educational  questions. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  50l 

590.  MADAME    PAPE-CARPENTIER    (1815-1878). —With 
Madame  Pape-Carpentier,  we  leave  the  region  of  .theories  to 
enter  the  domain  of  facts ;  we  have  to  do  with  a  practical 
teacher.     In    1846,   after  several  trials  at  teaching   at  La 
Fleche,  her  native   city,  and  at  Mans,   she   published  her 
Counsels  on  the  Management  of  Infant  Schools.    In  1847  she 
founded  at  Paris  a  Mothers'  Normal  School,  which  the  next 
year,  under  the  ministry  of  Carnot,  became  a  public  estab- 
lishment, and  which,  in  1852,  under  the  ministry  of  Fortoul, 
took  the  distinctive  title  Practical  Courses  on  Infant  Schools. 
It  is  there  that  during  twenty-seven  years  Madame  Pape- 
Carpentier  applied  her  methods  and  trained  a  large  number 
of  pupils,  more  than  fifteen  hundred,  who  have  propagated 
in  France  and  abroad  her  teaching  and  her  ideas.     In  1847 
she  was  removed  from  the  management  of  her  normal  school 
through  intrigues  ;  but  her  loss  of  position  was  not  of  long 
duration.     A  little  later  she  was  appointed  inspector-general 
of  infant  schools. 

591.  GENERAL    CHARACTER   OF   HER   WORKS.  —  Madame 
Pape-Carpentier  may  be  considered  as  a  pupil  of  Pestalozzi 
and  of  Frcebel.     She  was  specially  occupied  with  elementary 
education,  and  carried  into  her  work  a  spirit  of  great  sim- 
plicity.    We  must  not  demand  of  her  ambitious  generalities 
nor  views  on  abstract  metaphysics  ;  but  she  excels  in  practical 
wisdom,  and  speaks  the  language  of  childhood  to  perfection. 

592.  PRINCIPAL  WORKS    OF   MADAME    PAPE-CARPENTIER. 
—  Among  the  important  works  of  Madame  Pape-Carpentier 

we  shall  recommend  the  following  in  particular  :  — 

1.  Advice  on  the  Management  of  Infant  Schools  (1845). 
In  her  preface  the  author  excuses  herself  for  undertaking 
"  a  subject  of  such  gravity."  But  she  goes  on  to  say  that 
"  no  instruction  has  vet  been  given  the  teacher  on  the  educa- 


502  THE  HISTORY  OP  PEDAGOGY. 

tion  of  the  poor  child,"  and  she  asks  the  privilege  of  speak- 
ing iu  the  name  of  her  personal  experience.  This  book, 
often  reprinted,  has  become  Enseignement  pratique  dans  les 
salles  d'asile.1 

2.  Narratives  and  Lessons  on  Objects  (1858).     This  is  a 
collection  of    little  stories,  "  simple  as  childhood,"   which 
were  tested   before   children   before   being  written,  and  in 
which    Madame  Pape-Carpentier    attempts  to   teach   them 
things  which  are  good :  "  I  mean,"  she  says,  "  things  really, 
seriously  good." 

3.  Pedagogical  Discussions  held  at  the  Sorbonne  (1867). 
During    the     Universal     Exposition     of     1867,     Monsieur 
Duruy  had  assembled  at  Paris  a  certain  number  of  teachers 
before  whom  pedagogical  discussions  were  held.     Madame 
Pape-Caipentier  took  upon  herself  the  special  task  of    ex- 
plaining to  them  how  the  methods  of  the  infant  school  might 
be  introduced  into  the  primary  school. 

4.  Heading  and  Work  for  Children  and  Mothers  (1873). 
Here    Madame    Pape-Carpentier    is    especially    intent    on 
popularizing  the  methods  of  Froebel ;  she  suggests  ingenious 
exercises  which  can  be  applied  to  children  to  give  them  skill 
in  the  use  of  their  fingers,  and  to  inspire  them  with  a  taste 
for  order  and  symmetry. 

5.  Complete   Course  of  Education    (1874).     This  book, 
which  would  have  been  the  general  statement  of  the  peda- 
gogical principles  of  the  author,  was  left  incomplete.     Only 
three  volumes  have  appeared.     A  few  quotations  will  make 
known  their  spirit. 

"  To  co-operate  with  nature  in  her  work,  to  extend  it,  to 
correct  her  when  she  goes  wrong,  —  such  is  the  task  of  the 
educator.  In  all  grades  of  education,  nature  must  be 
respected. 

1  See  the  sixth  edition,  Paris,  Hachette,  1877. 


WOMEN    AS   EDUCATORS.  503 

"  The  child  should  live  in  the  midst  of  fresh  and  soothing 
impressions  ;  the  objects  which  surround  him  in  the  school 
should  be  graceful  and  cheerful. 

"  Socrates  has  admirably  said,  '  The  duty  of  education  is 
to  give  the  idea  birth  rather  than  to  communicate  it.' " 

G.  Note  on  the  Education  of  the  Senses,  and  some  Peda- 
gogical Appliances  (1878).  Madame  Pape-Carpentier  is 
very  much  interested  in  the  education  of  the  senses,  because, 
she  says,  "every  child  born  into  the  world  is  a  workman  in 
prospect,  a  future  apprentice  to  an  occupation  still  unknown." 
It  is  then  necessan-  to  perfect  at  an  early  hour  the  natural 
tools  he  will  need  in  order  to  fulfill  his  task.  The  education 
of  the  senses  will  have  its  place  some  day  or  other  in  the 
official  programmes,  and,  for  this  sense-training,  instruments 
are  just  as  necessary  as  books  are  for  the  culture  of  the  in- 
tellect. 

593.  LESSONS  ON  OBJECTS.  —  "The  object-lesson  is  the 
new  continent  on  which  Madame  Pape-Carpentier  has  planted 
her  standard."  She  herself  wrote  a  number  of  works  which 
contain  models  of  object-lessons  ;  she  1ms  stated  the  theory 
of  them,  notably  in  her  discussions  of  18G7.  It  is  even 
permissible  to  think  that  she  has  made  a  wrong  use  of  them. 
"\Vith  her,  the  object-lesson  becomes  a  universal  pi'ocess 
which  she  applies  to  all  subjects,  to  chemistry,  to  physics, 
to  grammar,  to  geography,  and  to  ethics. 

However  it  may  be,  this  is  the  course  to  follow  according 
to  her  :  it  is  necessary  to  conform  to  the  order  in  which  the 
perceptions  of  the  intelligence  succeed  each  other.  The 
child's  attention  is  first  struck  by  color.  Then  he  will  dis- 
tinguish the  form  of  the  object,  and  would  know  its  use, 
its  material,  and  mode  of  production.  It  is  according  to 
this  natural  development  of  the  child's  curiosity  that  the 
object-lesson  should  proceed. 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Moreover,  it  can  be  given  with  reference  to  everything. 
Madame  Pape-Carpentier  admits  what  she  calls  "  occasional 
lessons";  but  she  also  thinks  that  object-lessons  can  be 
given  according  to  a  plan,  a  fixed  programme. 

Madame  Pape-Carpentier  deserves,  then,  to  be  heard  as  an 
experienced  adviser  in  whatever  relates  to  elementary  in- 
struction ;  but  that  which  we  must  admire  in  her  still  more 
than  her  professional  skill  and  her  pedagogical  knowledge,  is 
an  elevated  conception  of  the  teacher's  work,  and  a  lofty  in- 
spiration coming  from  her  devotion  to  children  and  her  love 
for  them. 

"To  educate  children  properly,"  she  said,  "ought  to  be 
for  the  teacher  only  the  second  part  of  his  undertaking  ;  the 
first,  and  the  most  difficult,  is  to  perfect  himself." 

"  What  we  are  able  to  do  for  children  is  measured  by  the 
love  we  bear  them." 

594.  OTHER  WOMEN  WHO  WERE  EDUCATORS.  —  If  the  edu- 
cation of  women  has  received  an  important  development  in 
our  da}-,  it  is  due,  then,  in  great  part  to  the  women  who  have 
shown  what  they  were  worth  and  what  the}'  could  do,  either 
as  teachers  or  as  educators.  And  yet  the  history  whose 
principal  features  we  have  just  traced  remains  very  incom- 
plete. By  the  side  of  the  celebrated  women  whose  works  we 
have  studied,  we  should  mention  Mademoiselle  Sauvan,  who, 
in  1811,  founded  at  Chaillot  an  educational  establishment 
which  she  did  not  leave  till  about  1830,  to  take  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  direction  of  the  girls'  schools  of  Paris  ;  ' 
Madame  de  Maisonneuve,  author  of  an  Essay  on  the  Instruc- 
tion of  Women,2  in  which  she  sums  up  the  results  of  a  long 

1  See  the  work  entitled  Madamoiselle  Savvan,  premiere  inspectrice  des 
tcolesde  Paris,  sa  vie,  son  ceitvre,  par  E.  Gossot.     Paris,  1880. 

2  Essai  sur  I' instruction  desfcmmcs.    Tours,  1841. 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  505 

experience  acquired  in  the  management  of  a  private  boarding- 
school. 

But  men  have  also  contributed  by  their  theoretical  objec- 
tions, or  by  their  practical  efforts,  to  the  progress  of  the  edu- 
cation of  women.  It  would  be  of  interest,  for  example,  to 
study  the  courses  in  secondary  instruction  of  Lourmaud 
(1834),  and  the  Courses  in  Maternal  Education,  of  Le"vi 
Alvares  (1820).  "Monsieur  LeVi,"  saysGre"ard,  "makes  the 
mother  tongue  and  history  the  basis  of  instruction.  He  him- 
self sums  up  his  methods  in  this  formula  of  progressive  edu- 
cation :  Facts,  comparison  of  facts,  moral  or  philosophical 
consequence  of  facts  ;  that  is,  seeing,  comparing,  judging. 
This  is  the  very  order  of  nature."  Let  us  mention  also  the 
work  of  Aime"  Martin,  The  Education  of  Mothers,1  which  for 
several  years  enjoyed  an  extraordinary  reputation  that  it 
would  be  rather  difficult  to  justify. 

595.      DUPANLOUP    AND    THE     EDUCATION     OF    WOMEN.  A 

bishop  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Dupanloup,  has  assumed 
to  rival  Fenelou  in  the  delicate  question  of  the  education  of 
women.  Different  works,  and  in  particular  the  one  which  he 
esteemed  most,  his  Letters  on  the  Education  of  Girls,  pub- 
lished after  his  death  in  1879,  give  proof  of  the  interest 
which  he  took  in  these  questions.  These  letters  are  for  the 
most  part  real  letters  which  were  addressed  to  women  of  the 
time.  Notwithstanding  the  variety  and  the  freedom  of  the 
epistolary  form,  the  work  may  be  divided  into  three  parts  : 
1.  the  principles  of  education;  2.  the  education  of  young 
women  ;  3.  free  and  personal  stud}-  in  the  world.  Dupanloup 
should  be  thanked  for  having  summoned  woman  to  a  true 
intellectual  culture,  and  for  not  consenting  to  have  her  facul- 
ties remain  "  smothered  and  useless."  Through  the  revela- 

1  The  first  edition  is  dated  1834.     The  ninth  was  published  in  1873. 


506  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

tions  of  the  confessional  and  the  spiritual  direction  of  a  great 
number  of  women,  Dupauloup  knew  exactly  what  a  void 
an  incomplete  education  of  the  mind  and  heart  leaves  in  the 
soul.  He  is  indeed  willing  to  acknowledge  that  piety  is  not 
enough,  and  with  a  certain  breadth  of  spirit  which  drew  upon 
him  the  censure  of  the  ultramontane  press,  he  recommends 
the  serious  studies  to  women.  His  counsels,  however,  are 
addressed  only  to  women  of  the  middle  classes,  to  those  who, 
he  says,  "  occupy  the  third  story  of  houses  in  Paris."  His 
book  is  rather  a  reminiscence  of  the  seventeenth  century,  of 
its  manners  and  its  habits  of  thinking,  than  a  living  work  of 
to-day,  adapted  to  the  needs  of  modern  society. 

[596.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  The  formal  discussion 
of  woman's  education  by  women  marks  an  important  epoch 
in  the  history  of  education.  Had  the  education  of  men  been 
wholly,  or  even  chiefly,  discussed  by  women,  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  it  would  have  been  more  or  less  partial  and 
imperfect. 

2.  The  formal  discussion  of  infant  education  by  women  is 
scarcely  less  important ;  for  nothing  less  than  maternal  in- 
stinct and  affection  can  divine  the  nature  and  the  needs  of 
the  child. 

3.  This  study  calls  attention  to  the  need  of  making  the 
education  of  women  serious  instead  of  ornamental.     Plato 
based  his  recommendation  of  the  equal  education  of  men  and 
women  on  equality  of  civil  functions.     In  modern  thought 
it  is  the  conception  of  equal  rights  and  of  equal  abilities 
that  tends  to  prescribe  the  same  course  of  intellectual  train- 
ing for  both  sexes. 

4.  The  educational  work  of  the  two  Englishwomen,  Miss 
Edgeworth  and  Miss  Hamilton,  can  be  studied  with  great  prof- 


WOMEN   AS   EDUCATORS.  507 

it.      The  first  excels  in  practical  wisdom,  and  the  second  in 
philosophic  insight. 

5.  The  Progressive  Education  of  Madame  Necker  is  a 
classic  which  fairly  ranks  with  the  Emile  of  Rousseau,  and 
the  Education  of  Herbert  Spencer.] 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE  THEORY  AND  PRACTICE  OF  EDUCATION  IN  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 

THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  J  VOTES  OF  THE  COUN- 
CILS-GENERAL (1801)  J  FOURCROY  AND  THE  LAW  OF  1802  J  FOUNDA- 
TION OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  (1806)  J  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  IMPERIAL 
UNIVERSITY  ;  INTENTIONS  OF  THE  DYNASTY  ;  PRIMARY  INSTRUC- 
TION NEGLECTED;  ORIGIN  OF  MUTUAL  INSTRUCTION;  BELL  AND 
LANCASTER  ;  SUCCESS  OF  MUTUAL  INSTRUCTION  IN  FRANCE  J  MORAL 
ADVANTAGES;  ECONOMICAL  ADVANTAGES;  ORGANIZATION  OF 
SCHOOLS  ON  THE  MUTUAL  SYSTEM  J  VICES  OF  THIS  SYSTEM  J  STATE 
OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION;  GUIZOT  AND  THE  LAW  OF  1833;  HIGHER 
PRIMARY  SCHOOLS;  CIRCULAR  OF  GUIZOT;  PROGRESS  IN  POPULAR 
INSTRUCTION;  PROGRAMMES  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION;  TIM-: 
THEORISTS  OF  EDUCATION;  JACOTOT  (1770-1840);  THE  PARADOXES 
OF  JACOTOT;  ALL  is  IN  ALL;  THE  SAINT-SIMONIANS  AND  THE 

PHALANSTERIANS  ;  FOURIER  (1772-1837)  ;  AUGUSTE  COMTE  (1798-1857) 
AND  THE  POSITIVISTS;  DUPANLOUP  (1802-1878)  ;  ANALYSIS  OF  TII10 
TREATISE  ON  EDUCATION;  ERRORS  AND  PREJUDICES;  THE  SPIRIT- 
UALISTIC SCHOOL  AND  THE  UNIVERSITY  MEN;  ANALYTICAL  SIM- 
MARY. 


597.  THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY. — An 
effort  more  and  more  marked  to  organize  education  in  accord- 
ance with  the  data  of  psychology  and  on  a  scientific  basis, 
and  to  co-ordinate  pedagogical  methods  in  accordance  with  a 
rational  plan  ;  a  manifest  tendency  to  take  the  control  of 
education  from  the  hands  of  the  Church  in  order  to  restore  it 
to  the  State  and  to  lay  society ;  a  larger  part  accorded  the 
family  in  the  management  of  children  ;  a  faith  more  and  more 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      509 

sanguine  in  the  efficacy  of  instruction,  and  an  ever-growing 
purpose  to  have  every  member  of  the  human  family  partici- 
pate in  its  benefits,  —  such  are  some  of  the  characteristics  of 
the  pedagogy  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Education  tends 
more  and  more  to  become  a  social  problem  ;  it  is  to  be  an 
affair  of  universal  interest.  It  is  no  longer  to  be  merely  a 
question  of  i-egnlating  select  studios  for  the  use  of  a  few  who 
are  the  favorites  of  birth  and  fortune  ;  but  science  must  be 
placed  within  the  reach  of  all,  and  through  the  simplification 
of  methods  and  the  universal  distribution  of  knowledge,  it 
must  be  adapted  to  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  new  society. 
We  have  no  intention  to  follow  in  this  place,  in  all  its 
details,  and  in  the  diversity  of  its  currents,  this  educational 
movement  of  a  century  which  has  not  yet  said  its  last  word  ; 
but  we  must  limit  ourselves  to  calling  attention  to  the  points 
which  seem  to  us  essential. 

598.  LAWS  OF  THE  COUNCILS-GENERAL  OF  1801.  —  Not- 
withstanding the  efforts  of  the  Revolution,  public  instruction 
in  France,  during  the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
was  far  from  being  flourishing.  There  was  urgent  need  of 
introducing  reforms.  The  Councils-General  were  summoned 
in  1801  to  give  their  advice  on  the  organization  of  studies. 
That  which  is  very  noticeable  in  the  State  papers  of  the 
Councils-General  of  1801,  is  that  the  departmental  assem- 
blies agree  in  demanding  the  establishment  of  a  National 
University.  The  Councils-General  complain  that  the  pro- 
fessors, being  no  longer  united  by  the  ties  of  solidarity,  as 
were  the  members  of  the  religious  teaching  congregations  of 
the  old  regime,  march  at  random,  without  unity,  without 
concerted  direction.  They  solicit,  then,  a  uniform  organi- 
zation of  instruction.  They  even  conceive  the  idea  of  an 
official  instruction  administered  exclusively  by  the  State. 


510  THE   HISTOKY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

599.  FouRCROY1  AND  THE  LAW  OF  1802. — We  have  not 
the  space  to  dwell  loug  on  the  bill  of  Fourcroy,  which  became 
the  law  of  1802,  although  this  measure,  it  has  been  said,  was 
amended  twenty-three  times  before  being  submitted  to  the 
Corps  Legislatif  and  to  the  Tribunate. 

Fourcroy  did  not  sufficiently  recognize  the  rights  of  the 
State.  Doubtless  he  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  assert,  with 
Adam  Smith,  that  education  should  be  abandoned  entirely 
to  private  enterprise ;  but  he  thinks  that  the  task  of  organ- 
izing the  primary  schools  must  be  left  to  the  communes. 
In  his  opinion,  that  which  prevented  the  success  of  these 
schools  was  the  attempt  to  impose  too  great  a  uniformity 
on  them.  He  demands  that  the  teachers  be  chosen  by  the 
mayors,  or  by  the  municipal  councillors,  who  alone  are  cog- 
nizant of  the  local  interests.  The  primary  school  is  the  need 
of  all.  Then  let  it  be  the  affair  of  all.  Fourcro}'  was  mis- 
taken. Primary  instruction  became  a  reality  in  France  only 
on  the  day  when  the  State  vigorously  put  its  hand  on  it. 

On  certain  points,  however,  the  law  of  1802  prepared  the 
wa}-  for  the  approaching  creation  of  Napoleon  ;  for  example, 
in  giving  to  the  First  Consul  the  appointment  of  the  pro- 
fessors of  the  colleges,  and  in  placing  the  primary  schools 
under  the  supervision  of  the  prefects. 

600.  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  (1806). — The  law 
of  May  11,  1806,  completed  by  the  decrees  of  March  17, 
1808,   and  of  1811,   established  the  University,  that  is,  a 
teaching  corporation,  unique  and  entirely  dependent  on  the 
State  :  — 

"  There  shall  be  constituted  a  body  charged  exclusively 

1  Fourcroy  (1755-1809),  a  celebrated  chemist,  was  director-general  of 
public  instruction  in  1801.  He  prepared,  in  the  following  years,  the  decrees 
relative  to  the  establishment  of  the  University. 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      511 

with  instruction  and  public  education  throughout  the  whole 
extent  of  the  Empire." 

Instruction  thus  became  a  function  of  the  State,  on  the 
same  basis  as  the  administration  of  justice  or  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  army. 

At  the  same  time  that  it  lost  all  autonomy,  all  indepen- 
dence, the  University  gained  the  formidable  privilege  of 
being  alone  charged  with  the  national  instruction. 

"No  one  can  open  a  school  or  teach  publicly,  without 
being  a  member  of  the  Imperial  University  and  without  hav- 
ing been  graduated  from  one  of  its  Faculties."  "  No  school 
can  be  established  outside  of  the  University,  and  without  the 
authorization  of  its  head." 

We  know  what  protestations  were  excited,  even  on  the 
start,  by  the  establishment  of  this  Universitj-  monopoly. 
"  It  was  not  enough  to  enchain  parents  ;  it  was  still  neces- 
sary to  dispose  of  the  children.  Mothers  have  been  seen 
hastening  from  the  extremities  of  the  Empire,  coming  to  re- 
claim, in  an  agony  of  tears,  the  sons  whom  the  government 
had  carried  off  from  them."  Thus  spoke  Chateaubriand, 
before  lavishing  his  adulations  on  the  restorer  of  altars,  and 
he  added,  with  an  extravagance  of  imagination  which  recoils 
on  itself,  "Children  were  placed  in  schools  where  they  were 
taught  at  the  sound  of  the  drum,  irreligion,  debauchery,  and 
contempt  for  the  domestic  virtues  !  "  Joseph  de  Maistre 
was  more  just:  "Fontanes,"1  he  said,  "has  large  views 
and  excellent  intentions.  The  plan  of  his  University  is 
grand  and  comprehensive.  It  is  a  noble  body.  The  soul 
will  come  to  it  when  it  can.  Celibacy,  subordination,  devo- 
tion of  the  whole  life  without  religious  motive,  are  required. 
Will  they  be  obtained?  " 2 

1  Fontanes  (1757-1821),  first  Grand  Master  of  the  University. 

2  Memoirc  politique  of  Joseph  de  Maistre,  Paris,  1858,  p.  30. 


512  THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

601.  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  IMPERIAL  UNIVERSITY. — The 
Imperial  University  comprised,  like  the  present  University, 
Colleges,  Lyce'es,  and  Faculties.      The  Colleges  furnished 
secondary  instruction,  like   the  Lyc£es,  but  less  complete. 
There  were  a  Faculty  of  Letters  and  a  Faculty  of  Sciences 
for  each   academic  centre ;    but  these  Faculties  were  very 
poorly  equipped,  with  their  endowment  of  from  five  to  ten 
thousand  francs  at  most,  and  with  their  few  professors.    The 
professors  of  the  neighboring  Lycee  (professors  of  rhetoric 
and  mathematics)   formed  a  part  of  the  establishment,  and 
each  Faculty  included  at  most  but  two  or  three  other  chairs. 

Latin  and  mathematics  formed  the  basis  of  the  instruction 
in  the  Lyc6es.  The  Revolution  had  not  come  in  vain,  since 
that  which  it  had  vigorously  demanded  was  now  realized  ; 
the  sciences  and  the  classical  languages  were  put  on  a  foot- 
ing of  equality. 

602.  DYNASTIC   PREPOSSESSIONS. — That   which   absorbed 
the  attention  of  the  founder  of  the  Imperial  University  was 
less  the  schemes  of  study  than  the  general  principles  on 
which  the  rising  generations  were  to  be  nourished.     In  this 
respect  the  thought  of  the  Emperor  is  not  obscure.     He  does 
not  dissemble  it.     God  and  the  Emperor  are  the  two  words 
which  must  be  graven  into  the  depths  of  the  soul. 

"All  the  schools  of  the  Imperial  University  will  make  as 
the  basis  of  their  instruction  :  1 .  the  precepts  of  the  Catholic 
religion  ;  2.  fidelity  to  the  Emperor,  to  the  imperial  mon- 
archy, the  depository  of  the  happiness  of  the  people,  and  to 
the  Napoleonic  dynasty,  the  conservator  of  tlie  unity  of 
France,  and  of  all  the  ideas  proclaimed  by  the  Constitution." 

"  Napoleon,"  as  Guizot  says,  "  attempted  to  convert  into 
an  instrument  of  despotism  an  institution  which  tended  to 
be  only  a  centre  of  light." 


EDUCATION    IN    THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      513 

603.  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION  NEGLECTED. — Primary  instruc- 
tion never  occupied  the  attention  of  Napoleon  I.     The  decree 
of  1-S05  contented  itself  with  promising  measures  intended  to 
assure  the  recruitment  of  teachers,  especially  the  creation  of 
one  or  more  normal  classes  within  the  colleges  and  lyc^es. 
Moreover,  the  Grand  Master  was  to  encourage  and  to  license 
the  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools,  while  supervising  their 
establishments.     Finally,  the  right  to  establish  schools  was 
left  to  families  or  to  religious  corporations,  the  budget  of  the 
Empire  containing  no  item  of  appropriation  for  the  cause  of 
popular  instruction. 

The  Restoration  was  scarcely  more  generous  towards  the 
instruction  of  the  people.  By  the  ordinance  of  February  29, 
1815,  it  granted  fifty  thousand  francs  as  encouragement  to  the 
primary  schools.  Was  this  derisive  liberality  any  better  than 
complete  silence  and  neglect?  A  more  important  measure 
was  the  establishment  of  cantonal  committees  charged  with 
the  supervision  of  primary  schools.  These  committees  were 
placed,  sometimes  under  the  direction  of  the  rector,  and  at 
others  under  the  authority  of  the  bishop,  at  the  pleasure  of 
the  vicissitudes  of  politics.  Certificates  of  qualification  were 
delivered  to  the  members  of  the  authorized  congregations,  on 
the  simple  presentation  of  their  letters  of  permission.  We 
can  imagine  what  a  body  of  teachers  could  be  assured  by  such 
a  mode  of  recruitment. 

In  anticipation  of  the  monarchy  of  July,  which  in  its  liberal 
dispositions  was  to  appear  more  regardful  of  popular  educa- 
tion, private  initiative  signalized  itself  under  the  Restoration 
by  the  foundation  of  the  Society  for  Elementary  Instruction, 
and  also  by  the  encouragement  it  gave  to  the  first  attempts  at 
mutual  instruction. 

604.  ORIGIN  OF  MUTUAL  INSTRUCTION.  — Two  Englishmen, 
Bell  and  Lancaster,  have  claimed  the  honor  of  having  in- 


514  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

vented  mutual  instruction.  The  fact  is,  neither  of  them 
invented  it ;  they  simply  gave  it  currency.  It  is  in  France, 
if  not  in  India,  that  we  must  look  for  the  real  origin  of 
mutual  instruction.  We  have  seen  that  Madame  de  Mainte- 
non,  Rollin,  La  Salle,  and  Pestalozzi,  practised  it,  and  to  a 
certain  extent  gave  it  currency.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
Herbault  had  employed  H  in  the  hospital  of  La  Pitie  (1747), 
the  Chevalier  Paulet  at  Vincennes  (1774),  and,  finally,  the 
Abb6  Gaultier,1  also  a  Frenchman,  had  introduced  the  use  of 
it  into  London,  in  1792,  some  years  before  Bell  brought  it 
from  India. 

605.  BELL  (1753-1832)  AND  LANCASTER  (1778-1838).- 
Bell  and  Lancaster  are  none  the   less   the   first   authorized 
propagators  of  the  mutual  method,  or,  as  the  English  say,  of 
the  monitorial  system.     Bell  had  used  it  at  Madras,  in  imita- 
tion of  the  Hindoo  teachers,  and  in  1798  he  introduced  it  into 
England.     But  at  the  same  period,  a  young  English  teacher, 
Lancaster,  applied  the  same  methods  with  success,  and,  so 
far  as  it  appears,  through  a  suggestion  absolutely  personal 
and  original.     Lancaster  was  a  Quaker,  and  Bell  a  Church- 
man, so  that  public  opinion  in  England  was  divided  between 
the  two  rivals.     The  truth  is  that  they  had  applied  at  the 
same  time  a  system  which  was  known  before  their  day,  and 
which  must  naturally  have  been  suggested  to  all  teachers  wl:o 
have  too  large  a  number  of  children  to  instruct,  as  a  result 
of  the  inadequacy  of  their  resources  and  the  lack  of  a  teaching 
force  sufficiently  large. 

606.  SUCCESS  OF  MUTUAL  INSTRUCTION  IN  FRANCE.  —  Mu- 
tual instruction,  which  was  maintained  in  certain  schools  of 

1  The  Abbe  Gaultier  (1746-1818),  author  of  a  large  number  of  works  on 
elementary  instruction,  and  almost  a  reformer  in  his  way.  He  employed 
teachin'i  by  sif/ht,  aud  recommended  varied  exercises,  such  as  games  where 
he  introduced  counters,  tickets,  interrogations  in  the  form  of  lotteries. 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.     515 

Paris  till  1867,  for  a  long  time  enjoyed  an  extraordinary 
credit  in  France.  Under  the  Restoration,  its  success  was  so 
great  that  it  became  the  fashion,  and  even  a  craze.  Patron- 
ized by  the  most  eminent  men  of  that  day,  by  Royer-Collard, 
by  Laisne,  by  the  Duke  Decazes,  by  the  Duke  Pasquier, 
mutual  instruction  became  the  flag  of  the  liberal  party  in  the 
matter  of  instruction.  Political  passions  became  involved  in 
it.  The  new  system  came  into  competition  with  the  tradi- 
tional instruction  of  the  Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools, 
and  was  fought  and  denounced  as  immoral  by  all  the  partisans 
of  routine.  "  Mutual  instruction  was  charged  with  destroy- 
ing the  foundation  of  social  order  by  delegating  to  children 
a  power  which  ought  to  belong  only  to  men.  .  .  .  Men  held 
for  or  against  simultaneous  instruction,  its  rival,  as  if  it  were 
a  question  of  an  article  of  the  Charter."  : 

607.  MORAL  ADVANTAGES.  —  The  friends  of  mutual  instruc- 
tion, in  order  to  justify  their  enthusiasm,  made  the  most  of 
moral  reasons.  What  can  be  more  touching,  they  said,  than 
to  see  children  communicating  to  one  another  the  little  that 
they  know?  What  an  excellent  lesson  of  charity  and  of 
mutual  aid  !  The  Gospel  has  said,  Love  one  another.  Was 
it  not  giving  to  the  divine  precept  a  happy  translation  to  add, 
Instruct  one  another!  An  attempt  was  made,  moreover,  to 
introduce  mutuality  into  discipline  and  into  the  repression 
of  school  faults.  The  school,  on  certain  solemn  occasions, 
was  converted  into  a  court  for  trying  criminals.  "  All  this 
was  done  veiy  seriously,  and  it  was  also  very  seriously  felt 
that  these  practices,  passing  from  a  class  of  children  to  a 
class  of  adults,  would  contribute  to  introduce  into  society  the 
habits  of  a  true  and  useful  fraternity." 

1  See  Greard,  L'enseif/ncmcnt  prime/ire  a  Paris  de  1867  «  1877.  A  memoir 
published  in  1877,  pp.  75-90.  See  also  an  interesting  study  full  of  personal 
recollections  of  E.  Deschamps,  L'enseignement  mutual.  Toulouse,  1883. 


516  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

608.  ECONOMICAL  ADVANTAGES.  —  To  tell  the  truth,  mu- 
tual  instruction  was  above  all  else    "a  useful  expedient," 
according  to  Rollin's  expression.    At  a  period  when  teachers 
were  scarce,  when  the  budget  of  public  instruction  did  not 
exist,  it  was  natural  that  an  economic  system  which  dispensed 
with  teachers,  and  which  reduced  to  almost  nothing  the  cost 
of  instruction,  should  be  hailed  with  enthusiasm.    Let  us  add 
that  there  was  also  an  economy  in  books,  since  "  there  was 
need  of  only  one  book,  which  pupils  never  used^  and  which 
would  thus  last  for  several  years." 

Jomard  calculated  that  there  were  3,000,000  children  to 
instruct,  and  that,  according  to  the  ordinary  system,  this 
would  require  the  expenditure  of  more  than  45,000,000 
francs.1 

Now,  according  to  the  calculations  of  the  Comte  de  La- 
borde,2  1000  pupils  being  able  to  be  educated  by  one  single 
teacher,  by  the  system  of  mutual  instruction,  more  easily 
than  30  could  have  been  by  the  old  system,  a  sum  of  10,000 
francs  granted  annually  by  the  State  would  suffice  to  educate 
in  twelve  years  the  entire  generation  of  poor  children.3 

609.  ORGANIZATION  OF  SCHOOLS  ON  THE  MUTUAL  PLAN.  — 
Bell  defined  mutual  instruction  as  "  the  method  by  means 
of  which  a  whole  school  may  instruct  itself,  under  the  super- 
vision of  one  single  master." 

Here  is  the  picture  of  a  mutual  school,  as  described  by 
Gre"ard  :  — 

"That was  a  striking  spectacle  at  the  first  glance,  —  those 

1  Jomard  (1777-1862),  member  of  the  Society  for  Elementary  Instruc- 
tion, author  of  Tableaux  des  e'coles  tflementaires. 

2  The  Comte  de  Laborde  (1771-1842),  author  of  apian  a" Education  pour 
les  enfants. 

8  Among  the  other  propagators  of  mutual  instruction,  mention  should  be 
made  of  the  Abbe  Gaultier,  Larochefoucauld-Liancourt,  De  Lasteyrie,  eic. 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CEMTURY.      517 

long  aud  vast  structures  which  contained  a  whole  school, 
such  us  the  older  generations  of  our  teachers  recollect  still  to 
have  seen  at  the  Halle  aux  Draps.  In  the  middle  of  the 
room,  throughout  its  entire  length,  were  rows  of  tables  hav- 
ing from  five  to  twenty  places  each,  having  at  one  end,  at 
the  right,  the  desk  of  the  monitor,  and  the  board  having 
models  of  writing,  itself  surmounted  by  a  standard  or  tele- 
graph which  served  to  secure,  by  means  of  directions  easy  to 
read,  regularity  of  movements  ;  at  the  side  of  the  room,  and 
all  along  the  walls,  there  were  rows  of  semi-circles,  about 
which  were  arranged  groups  of  children  ;  on  the  walls,  on  a 
line  with  the  eye,  there  was  a  blackboard  on  which  were 
performed  the  exercises  in  computation,  and  from  which 
were  suspended  the  charts  for  reading  and  grammar ;  right 
at  his  side,  within  reach  of  his  hand,  was  the  stick  with 
which  the  teacher  was  provided  for  conducting  the  lesson  ; 
finally,  at  the  lower  part  of  the  room,  on  a  wide  and  high 
platform,  accessible  by  steps  and  surrounded  by  a  balus- 
trade, was  the  chair  of  the  master,  who,  employing  in  suc- 
cession, according  to  fixed  rules,  voice,  bdton,  or  whistle, 
surveyed  the  tables  and  groups,  distributing  commendation  or 
reproof,  and  directing,  in  a  word,  like  a  captain  on  the  deck 
of  his  vessel,  the  whole  machinery  of  instruction." 

In  respect  of  systematic  movements  and  exterior  order, 
nothing  is  more  charming  than  the  appearance  of  a  school 
conducted  on  the  mutual  plan.  It  remains  to  inquire  what 
were  the  educational  results  of  the  system,  and  whether  the 
fashion  which  brought  it  into  favor  was  justified  by  real 
advantages. 

610.  VICES  OF  MUTUAL  INSTRUCTION.  —  The  monitor  was 
the  mainspring  of  the  mutual  method.  But  what  was  the 
monitor?  A  child,  more  intelligent,  doubtless,  than  his  com- 


518  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

rades,  but  too  little  instructed  to  be  equal  to  his  task.  The 
mutual  school  did  not  open  till  ten  o'clock.  From  eight  to 
ten  there  was  a  class  for  the  monitors.  There  they  learned 
in  haste  what  they  were,  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  to  teach  to 
the  other  children.  The  purpose  of  the  master  being  to  form 
good  instruments  as  quickly  as  possible,  the\'  were  fitted  up 
for  their  trade  by  the  most  expeditious  methods. 

"  What  sort  of  teachers  could  such  a  preparation  produce? 
To  teach  is  to  learn  twice,  it  has  been  truly  said  ;  but  on 
the  condition  of  having  reflected  on  that  which  has  been 
learned  and  upon  that  which  is  to  be  taught.  To  convey  light 
into  the  intelligence  of  another,  it  is  first  necessary  to  have 
produced  the  light  within  one's  self,  a  thing  which  supposes 
the  enlightened,  penetrating,  and  persevering  action  of  a 
mind  relatively  mature  and  trained.  From  the  class  where 
they  have  just  been  sitting  as  pupils,  the  monitors  —  mas- 
ters improvised  as  by  the  wave  of  a  wand,  —  passed  to 
the  classes  of  children  whom  they  were  to  indoctrinate " 
(GrSard) . 

The  instruction,  consequently,  became  purely  mechanical. 
The  monitor  faithfully  repeated  what  he  had  been  taught. 
Everything  was  reduced  to  mechanical  processes. 

Let  us  observe,  besides,  that  from  the  moral  point  of 
view,  the  mutual  system  left  much  to  be  desired.  The  mon- 
itors, we  are  told,  did  not  escape  the  intoxications  of 
pride.  Even  in  the  family  they  became  petty  t3Trants. 
Parents  complained  of  their  dictatorial  habits  and  their  tone 
of  authority. 

However  it  may  be,  mutual  instruction  has  rendered 
undeniable  services,  thanks  to  the  zeal  of  such  teachers  as 
Mademoiselle  Sauvan  and  Monsieur  Sarazin  ;  but  its  repu- 
tation went  on  diminishing  in  proportion  as  the  State  became 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      519 

more  and  more  disposed  to  make  sacrifices,  and  as  it  was 
possible  to  multiply  the  services  of  teachers.1 

611.  THE  STATE  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION. — Under  the 
title,  Exhibit  of  Primary  Instruction  in  France,  a  member  of 
the  University,  P.  Lorain,  published  in  1837  a  resume  of  the 
inquiry,  which,  by  the  orders  of  Guizot,  had  been  made  in 
1833  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  France,  by  the  labors 
of  more  than   400  inspectors.      Here  are  some  of  the  sad 
results  of  this  inquiry  :  all  the  teachers  did  not  know  how  to 
write  ;  a  large  number  employed  the  mechanism  of  the  three 
fundamental  rules  without  being  able  to  give  any  theoretical 
reason  for  these  operations.     "  The  ignorance  was  general." 

As  under  the  old  regime,  the  teacher  practiced  all  the 
trades  ;  he  was  day-laborer,  shoemaker,  innkeeper. 

"  He  had  his  wife  supply  his  place  while  he  went  hunting 
in  the  fields." 

The  functions  of  the  teacher,  poorly  rewarded,  exposed  to 
the  risk  of  a  very  slender  tuition,  enjoyed  no  consideration. 

"The  teacher  was  often  regarded  in  the  community  on 
the  same  footing  as  a  mendicant,  and  between  the  herdsman 
and  himself,  the  preference  was  for  the  herdsman." 

Consequently,  the  situation  of  school-master  was  the  most 
often  sought  after  by  men  who  were  infirm,  crippled,  unfit 
for  any  other  kind  of  work. 

"From  the  teacher  without  arms,  to  the  epileptic,  how 
many  infirmities  to  pass  through  !  " 

612.  GUIZOT  AND  THE  LAW  OF  JUNE  28,  1833.  — Primary 
instruction,   so  often  decreed   by  the  Revolution,   was  not 

1  Two  noted  attempts  to  extend  and  popularize  the  monitorial  system 
are  exhibited  in  the  following  works:  Pillans,  The  Rationale  of  Discipline 
(Edinburgh,  1852);  Bentham,  Chrestomathia  (London,  1816). 


520  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

really  organized  in  France  till  by  the  law  of  June  28,  1833, 
the  honor  of  which  is  due  in  particular  to  Guizot,  then  minis- 
ter of  public  instruction.1 

Primary  instruction  was  divided  into  two  grades,  —  elemen- 
tary and  higher.  Henceforth  there  was  to  be  a  school  for 
each  commune,  or  at  least  for  each  group  of  two  or  three 
communes.  The  State  reserved  the  right  of  appointing 
teachers,  and  of  determining  their  salan',  which,  it  is  true, 
in  certain  places,  did  not  exceed  two  hundred  francs.  Poor 
children  were  to  be  received  without  pay. 

613.  HIGHER  PRIMARY  SCHOOLS.  — One  of  the  most  praise- 
worthy purposes  of  the  legislator  of  1833  was  the  establish- 
ment of  higher  primary  instruction. 

" Higher  primary  instruction,"  he  said,  "necessarily  in- 
cludes, in  addition  to  all  the  branches  of  elementary  primary 
instruction,  the  elements  of  geometry,  and  its  common  appli- 
cations, especially  linear  drawing  and  surveying,  information 
on  the  physical  sciences  and  natural  history,  applicable  to 
the  uses  of  life,  singing,  the  elements  of  history  and  geog- 
raphy, and  particularly  of  the  history  and  geography  of 
France.  According  to  the  needs  and  the  resources  of  local- 
ities, the  instruction  shall  receive  such  developments  as  shall 
be  deemed  proper." 

A  higher  primary  school  was  to  be  established  in  the  chief 
towns  of  the  department  and  in  all  the  communes  which  had 
a  population  of  more  than  six  thousand  souls.  The  law  was 
executed  in  part.  In  1841,  one  hundred  and  sixty-one 
schools  were  founded.  But  little  by  little,  the  indifference 
of  the  government,  and,  above  all,  the  vanity  of  parents  who 
preferred  for  their  children  worthless  Latin  studies  to  a  good 

1  It  is  at  the  same  period,  in  1832,  that  Ge'rando  published  his  £\>urs 
normal  des  instituteurs. 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      521 

and  thorough  primary  instruction,   discouraged   these    first 
elibrts. 

The  legislator  of  1833  had  good  reason  for  thinking  that  a 
good  vest  was  worth  more  than  a  poor  coat.  His  mistake 
was  in  thinking  that  people  would  be  persuaded  to  abandon 
the  coat  in  order  to  take  the  vest.1  The  higher  schools  were 
almost  everywhere  annexed  to  the  colleges  of  secondar}-  in- 
struction. To  suppress  their  independence  and  their  own 
distinctive  features  was  to  destroy  them.  The  final  blow 
was  given  them  by  the  law  of  1850,  which  abstained  from 
pronouncing  their  name,  and  which  condemned  them  by  its 
silence. 

614.  CIRCULAR  OF  GUIZOT.  —  In  transmitting  to  teachers 
the  law  of  June  28,  1833,  Guizot  had  it  followed  \)\  a  cele- 
brated circular,  which  eloquently  stated  the  proper  office  of 
the  teacher,  his  duties  and  his  rights.  Here  are  some  pas- 
sages from  it : 

"  Do  not  make  a  mistake  here,  Sir.  While  the  career  of 
primary  instruction  may  be  without  renown,  its  duties  inter- 
est the  whole  of  society,  and  it  is  an  occupation  which  shares 
the  importance  attached  to  public  functions.  .  .  .  Universal 
primary  instruction  is  henceforth  to  be  one  of  the  guarantees 
of  order  and  social  stability." 

The  circular  next  examines  the  material  advantages  which 
the  new  law  assured  to  teachers,  and  it  continues  thus  :  — 

"However,  Sir,  as  I  well  know,  the  foresight  of  the  law 
and  the  resources  at  the  disposal  of  public  authority,  will 
never  succeed  in  rendering  the  humble  profession  of  a  com- 
munal teacher  as  attractive  as  it  is  useful.  Society  could 
not  reward  him  who  devotes  himself  to  this  service  for  all 
that  he  does  for  it.  There  is  no  fortune  to  gain  ;  there  is 

1  Cournot,  DCS  institutions  d'instruction  pitblique,  p.  315. 


522  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

scarcely  any  reputation  to  acquire  in  the  difficult  duties  which 
he  performs.  Destined  to  see  his  life  spent  in  a  monotonous 
occupation,  sometimes  even  to  encounter  about  him  the  in- 
justice and  the  ingratitude  of  ignorance,  he  would  often  grow 
disheartened,  and  would  perhaps  succumb  did  he  not  draw 
his  strength  and  his  courage  from  other  sources  than  from 
the  prospect  of  an  interest  immediate  and  purely  personal. 
It  is  necessary  that  a  profound  sense  of  the  moral  importance 
of  his  work  sustain  and  animate  him,  and  that  the  austere 
pleasure  of  having  served  men  and  secretly  contributed  to  the 
public  good,  become  the  noble  reward  which  his  conscience 
alone  can  give.  It  is  his  glory  to  aim  at  nothing  beyond  his 
obscure  and  laborious  condition,  to  spend  himself  in  sacri- 
fices scarcely  counted  by  those  who  profit  by  them,  and,  in 
a  word,  to  work  for  men  and  to  look  for  his  reward  only 
from  God." 

615.  PROGRESS  OF  POPULAR  INSTRUCTION. — It  would  be 
an  interesting  history  to  relate  in  detail  the  progress  of  popu- 
lar education  in  France  from  the  law  of  1833  to  our  day. 
The  public  bills  of  the  Republic  of  1848,  the  liberal  proposi- 
tions of  Carnot  and  of  Barthe'lemy  Saint-Hilaire,  the  recoil 
of  the  law  of  March  15,  1850,  the  statu  quo  of  the  first  years 
of  the  Second  Empire,  then  towards  the  end  the  praiseworthy 
efforts  and  tentatives  of  Duruy,  and,  finally,  under  the  Third 
Republic,  the  definite  and  triumphant  organization,  —  all 
this  is  sufficiently  known  and  too  recent  to  justify  us  in 
dwelling  on  it  here. 

For  successfully  introducing  anew  into  the  laws  the  princi- 
ples of  gratuity,  obligation,  and  secularization,  as  proclaimed 
by  the  French  Revolution,  not  less  than  a  century  was  neces- 
sary. And  in  particular,  the  better  spirits  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  convinced  of  the  need  of  obligatory  instruction 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY.     523 

only  by  slow  degrees.  However,  in  1833,  Cousin,  who  re- 
ported the  law  of  Guizot  to  the  Chamber  of  Peers,  expressed 
himself  as  follows  :  — 

"  A  law  which  should  make  of  primary  instruction  a  legal 
obligation  seems  to  me  to  be  no  more  above  the  powers  of 
the  legislator  than  the  law  on  the  national  guard,  and  that 
which  you  have  just  made  on  a  forced  appropriation  for  the 
public  good.  If  reasons  of  public  utility  justify  the  legisla- 
tor in  appropriating  private  property,  why  do  not  reasons  of 
a  much  higher  utility  justify  him  in  doing  less,  —  in  requir- 
ing that  children  receive  the  instruction  indispensable  to  every 
human  creature,  to  the  end  that  he  may  not  become  danger- 
ous to  himself  or  to  society  as  a  whole  ?  " 

Cousin  added  that  the  commission  of  which  he  was  the 
chairman  would  not  have  receded  from  measures  wisely  com- 
bined to  make  instruction  obligatory,  had  it  not  been  afraid 
of  provoking  difficulties,  and,  in  this  way,  of  postponing  a 
law  that  was  awaited  with  impatience.  The  evident  neces- 
sity of  instructing  the  people,  the  interests  of  society,  the 
interests  of  families  and  individuals,  —  all  these  considera- 
tions have  insensibly  overcome  the  scruples  or  the  illusions 
of  a  false  liberality,  and  it  is  no  longer  necessary,  to-daj-,  to 
repeat  the  eloquent  pleas  of  Carnot  in  his  bill  of  1848,  of 
Duruy,  and  of  Jules  Simon. 

In  1873  Guizot  expressed  himself  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  liberty  of  conscience  and  that  of  families  arc  facts 
and  rights  which,  in  this  question,  ought  to  be  scrupulously  re- 
spected and  guaranteed ;  but,  under  the  condition  of  this 
respect  and  of  these  guarantees,  it  may  happen  that  the  state 
of  society  and  the  state  of  minds  in  ay  render  legal  obligation, 
in  respect  of  primary  instruction,  legitimate,  salutary,  and  nec- 
essary. TJiis  is  the  condition  of  things  to-day.  The  movement 
in  favor  of  obligatory  instruction  is  sincere,  serious,  national. 


524  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Powerful  examples  authorize  and  encourage  it.  In  Germany, 
in  Switzerland,  in  Denmark,  in  most  of  the  American  States. 
primary  instruction  has  this  character,  and  civilization  has 
reaped  excellent  fruits  from  it.  France  and  its  government 
have  reason  to  welcome  this  principle." 

616.  PROGRAMMES  OF  PRIMARY  INSTRUCTION.  —  At  the 
same  time  that  primary  instruction  made  progress  by  its  ever- 
growing extension,  and  by  the  participation  in  it  of  a  greater 
number  of  individuals,  its  programmes  were  also  extended, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  compare  in  this  respect  the  different 
laws  which  have  regulated  the  matter  of  instruction  in  our 
century. 

The  law  of  1833  said:  "  Elementary  primary  instruction 
necessarily  comprises  moral  and  religious  instruction,  reading, 
writing,  the  elements  of  the  French  language  and  of  compu- 
tation, the  legal  system  of  weights  and  measures." 

The  bill  presented,  June  30,  1848,  by  Carnot,  minister  of 
public  instruction,  expresses  itself  thus  :  — 

"Primary  instruction  comprises:  1.  reading,  writing,  the 
elements  of  the  French  language,  the  elements  of  computa- 
tion, the  metric  system,  the  measure  of  distances,  elementary 
notions  of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  and  the  principal  facts 
of  agriculture  and  of  industry,  linear  drawing,  singing, 
elemental'}7  notions  on  the  history  and  geography  of  France  ; 
2.  a  knowledge  of  the  duties  and  the  rights  of  man  and 
citizen,  the  development  of  the  sentiments  of  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity  ;  3.  the  elementary  rules  of  hygiene,  and  use- 
ful exercises  in  physical  development." 

"  The  religious  instruction  is  given  by  the  ministers  of  the 
different  communions." 

According  to  the  bill  of  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire  (April 
10,  1849),  elementary  instruction  for  boys,  necessarily  com- 


EDUCATION    IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.     525 

prised  "  moral,  religious,  and  civic  instruction,  reading, 
writing,  the  elements  of  the  French  language,  the  elements 
of  computation,  the  legal  system  of  weights  and  measures, 
linear  drawing,  elementary  notions  of  agriculture  and  of 
hygiene,  singing  and  gymnastic  exercises. 

"According  to  the  needs  and  resources  of  localities,  ele- 
mentary primary  instruction  shall  receive  the  developments 
which  shall  be  thought  proper,  and  shall  comprise,  in  partic- 
ular, notions  on  the  history  and  geography  of  France." 

Finally, the  law  of  March  15,  1850,  is  worded  thus  :  — 
"Art.  23.  Primary  instruction  comprises  moral  and  relig- 
ious instruction,  reading,  writing,  the  elements  of  the  French 
language,  computation,  and  the  legal  system  of  weights  and 
measures.  It  may  comprise  in  addition,  arithmetic  applied 
to  practical  operations,  the  elements  of  history  and  geogra- 
phy, notions  of  the  physical  sciences  and  of  natural  history 
applicable  to  the  ordinary  purposes  of  life,  elementary  in- 
struction on  agriculture,  trade,  and  hygiene,  surveying,  level- 
ing, linear  drawing,  singing  and  gymnastics." 

Progress  has  especially  consisted,  since  1850,  in  rendering 
obligatory  that  which  was  simply  optional.  History,  for 
example,  did  not  become  a  subject  of  instruction  till  1867. 

617.  THE  THEORISTS  OF  EDUCATION. — Along  with  the 
progress  of  primary  instruction,  the  historian  of  the  peda- 
gogy of  the  nineteenth  century  would  have  also  to  follow  the 
development  of  secondary  instruction  and  of  superior  in- 
struction. He  would  have  to  write  the  history  of  the  Univer- 
sity, reforming  the  methods  of  its  lycees  and  its  colleges,  and 
ever  enlarging  in  a  noble  spirit  of  liberty  the  studies  of  its 
faculties.  But  we  should  depart  from  the  limits  of  our  plan, 
were  we  to  undertake  this  order  of  inquiries,  and  were  we  to 
enter  into  details  which  pertain  to  contemporary  history. 


526  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

That  which  should  engage  our  attention  is  the  theoretical 
reflections  of  the  different  thinkers  who,  in  our  century,  have 
discussed  the  principles  and  the  laws  of  education,  of  those 
at  least  who  have  become  celebrated  for  their  novel  views. 

618.  JACOTOT  (1770-1840).  — Jacotot,  who  has  maintained 
scarcely  any  celebrity  in  France  except  for  the  singularity  of 
his  paradoxes,  is  perhaps  of  all  French  educators  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  one  who  has  received  most  attention 
abroad,  particularly  in  Germany.  "  Jacotot,"  says  Doctor 
Dittes,  "  has  incited  a  lasting  improvement  in  the  public  in- 
struction of  Germany.  The  reform  which  he  introduced  into 
the  teaching  of  reading  is  important.  He  started  with  an 
entire  sentence,  which  was  pronounced,  explained,  and  learned 
by  heart  by  the  children,  and  afterward  analyzed  into  its 
constituent  parts. "]  On  the  other  hand,  a  French  critic, 
Bernard  Perez,  has  drawn  the  following  portrait  of  Jacotot :  — 

"  He  was  the  best  and  the  most  lovable  of  men.  He  had 
the  firmness,  patience,  honesty,  and  candor  of  superior  minds, 
an  inexhaustible  goodness  and  a  universal  charity  which 
make  him  close  all  his  letters  with  this  formula,  '  I  espe- 
cially commend  to  you  the  poor.'  This  ardent  philanthropy, 
as  well  as  his  enthusiasm  and  his  zeal  for  instruction,  per- 
vades even  his  writings,  though  full  of  inequalities  and 
verbal  eccentricities."  2 

G19.  PARADOXES  OF  JACOTOT. — In  his  principal  work, 
Universal  Instruction*  Jacotot  has  set  forth  his  principles, 
which  are  so  many  paradoxes,  "  All  intelligences  are  equal  "  ; 
"  Every  man  can  teach,  and  even  teach  that  which  he  him- 

1  Dittes,  op.  cit.  p.  272. 

'2  See  Jacotot  et  sa  methode  d' emancipation  intellectuelle,  by  Bernard 
Perez.    Paris,  1883. 
3  Enseignement  universel.    Paris,  1823. 


EDUCATION    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY.     527 

self  does  not  know  "  ;  "  One  can  instruct  himself  all  alone  "  ; 
"All  is  in  all." 

Doubtless  at  the  basis  of  Jacotot's  paradoxes  there  is  an 
element  of  truth ;  for  example,  the  very  just  idea  that  the 
best  teaching  is  that  which  encourages  3'oung  minds  to  think 
for  themselves.  Doubtless  also  he  qualified  the  exaggera- 
tion of  his  statement  when  he  said  that  the  inequality  of 
wills  at  once  destroys  the  equality  of  intelligences.  But  the 
violent  and  unreasonable  form  which  he  gave  to  his  ideas 
has  compromised  them  in  public  opinion.  That  which  is 
true  and  fruitful  in  his  system  has  been  forgotten,  and  we 
recall  only  the  whimsical  formulas  in  which  he  delighted. 

620.  ALL  is  IN   ALL.  —  The   most  famous   of   Jacotot's 
paradoxes  is  the  formula,  "  All  is  in  all."     The  whole  of 
Latin  is  in  a  page  of  Latin  ;  the  whole  of  music  is  in  a  piece 
of  music  ;  the  whole  of  arithmetic,  in  a  rule  of  computation. 

In  practice,  Jacotot  made  his  pupils  learn  the  first  six 
books  of  the  Telemachus.  Upon  this  text,  once  learned, 
and  recited  twice  a  week,  there  were  constructed  all  sorts  of 
exercises,  and  these  sufficed  for  the  complete  knowledge  of 
the  French  language.  In  the  same  way  the  Epitome  Hls- 
torice  Sacrce,  put  in  the  hands  of  pupils,  and  learned  in 
two  months,  was  almost  the  sole  instrument  for  the  study  of 
Latin.  In  fact,  and  aside  from  evident  exaggerations, 
Jacotot  rightly  thought  that  it  is  necessarj",  as  he  said,  "  to 
learn  something  well,  and  to  connect  with  this  all  the  rest." 

621.  THE  FOLLOWERS  OF  SAINT  SIMON  AND  OF  FOURIER. — 
There  is  little  of  practical  value  to  be  gathered  from  the  writ- 
ings of  the  celebrated  utopists,  who,  at  the  opening  of  this 
century,  became  known  by  their  plans  of  social  organization. 
It  is  the  chimerical  which  characterizes  their  systems.    Cnbet 
demanded  among  other  absurdities  that  all  ancient  books  be 


528  THE   HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY. 

burned,  and  that  no  new  books  be  written  except  by  com- 
mand of  the  State.  Besides,  he  would  have  the  school-code 
established  by  the  children  themselves.1 

Victor  Consede'raut  suppressed,  not  books,  but  discipline 
and  authority.  "  The  child,"  he  said,  "  shall  no  longer  be 
disobedient,  because  he  shall  no  longer  be  commanded."  - 

Saint  Simon,  in  1816,  communicated  to  the  Society  for 
Elementary  Instruction,  a  brief  essay  which  gave  proof  of  his 
interest  in  education.  For  him  and  his  disciples,  education 
is  "  the  aggregate  of  efforts  to  be  employed  in  order  to  adapt 
each  new  generation  to  the  social  order  to  which  it  is  called 
by  the  march  of  humanity."  This  was  to  mark  the  contrast 
between  modern  tendencies  which  aspire  above  all  else  to  an 
earthly  and  a  social  end,  with  ancient  tendencies  which  were 
subservient  to  supernatural  ideas.  ^Esthetic  sentiments, 
scientific  methods,  industrial  activity,  —  such  is  the  triple 
development  which  special  and  professional  education  should 
consider.  But  above  this  the  Saint-Simouians  place  moral 
education,  too  much  neglected,  as  they  think,  which  should 
consist  particularly  in  developing  in  the  young  the  sympa- 
thetic and  affectionate  faculties.  The  Saint-Sirnonians  placed 
but  little  dependence  on  science  and  abstract  principles  for 
assuring  among  men  the  reign  of  morality.  Sentiment,  in 
their  view,  is  the  true  moral  principle,  and  education,  conse- 
quently, ought  to  be  essentially  the  education  of  the  heart. 

622.  FOURIER  (1772-1837).  —  Fourier,  like  Saint  Simon, 
had  educational  pretensions.  There  is  nothing  more  curious 
than  his  treatise  on  Natural  Education.  In  it  there  is  only 
here  and  there  a  flash  of  good  sense  mingled  with  a  multi- 
tude of  grotesque  fancies. 

1  Cabet,  Fo>/ac/e  en  I<:arie.   Paris,  1842. 

2  Consede'rant,  The'orie  d'education  rationnelle  et  attrayante  du  dix- 
neuvieme  siecle.    Paris,  1844. 


EDUCATION   IN    THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.     529 

Fourier  renews  the  Utopias  of  Plato,  and  confides  infants 
to  public  nurses.  He  is  more  reasonable  when,  in  spite  of 
his  declamations  on  the  excellence  of  nature,  he  is  really 
willing  to  recognize  in  children  a  diversity  of  characters,  and 
divides  "  the  nurslings  and  the  babies  "  into  three  classes, — 
"  the  benign,  the  malign,  and  the  devilkins." 

We  must  also  commend  Fourier  for  his  efforts  to  encour- 
age industrial  activity.  There  is  perhaps  a  valuable  hint  in 
those  walks  which  he  recommends  children  to  take  through 
manufactories  and  shops,  so  that  at  the  sight  of  such  or  such 
a  tool,  their  particular  vocation  may  be  suggested  to  them  ! 

The  instincts  of  the  child  are  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  Fourier, 
even  the  worst,  their  inclination  to  destroy,  for  example,  or 
their  contempt  for  the  rights  of  property.  Far  from  oppos- 
ing them,  he  turns  them  to  account  and  utilizes  them,  by 
employing  destructive  and  sloveuty  children  in  occupations 
in  accord  with  their  tastes  ;  for  example,  in  the  pursuit  of 
reptiles,  and  in  the  cleansing  of  sewers. 

But  it  is  useless  to  enter  into  longer  details.  The  education 
of  the  Fourierites  is  neither  a  discipline  nor  a  rule  of  life  ;  it  is 
simply  a  system  of  complaisant  adherence,  and  even  of  ardent 
provocation,  to  the  instincts  which  the  child  inherits  from 
nature.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  either  of  directing  or  of 
training ;  it  is  simply  necessary  to  emancipate  and  to  excite. 

G23.  AUGUSTS  COMTE  (1798-1857)  AND  THE  POSITFVISTS.  — 
The  positivist  school,  and  its  illustrious  founder,  Auguste 
Comtc,  could  not  omit,  in  their  encyclopaedic  works,  a  ques- 
tion so  important  as  that  of  education.  The  author  of  the 
Course  in  Positive  Philosophy  had  even  announced  a  special 
treatise  on  pedagogy,  "  a  great  subject,"  he  said,  "  which 
has  not  yet  been  undertaken  in  a  manner  sufficiently  system- 
atic." *  The  promise  was  not  kept,  but  from  different  pas- 

1  Cours  de  philosophic  positive,  second  edition,  1864.    Vol.  VI.  p.  771. 


530  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

sages  in  the  writings  of  Augnste  Comte  it  is  possible  to  re- 
construct, in  its  principal  features,  the  education  which  would 
be  derived  from  his  system. 

Comte  took  for  his  guide  the  natural  and  specific  evolution 
of  humanity. 

"  Individual  education  can  be  adequately  estimated  only 
according  to  its  necessary  conformity  with  collective  evo- 
lution." 

As  positivism  represents,  in  the  view  of  Comte,  the  su- 
preme degree  of  the  evolution  of  humanity,  the  new  education 
ought  to  be  positive. 

"  Right-minded  men  universally  recognize  the  necessity  of 
replacing  our  European  education,  a  system  essentially  theo- 
logical, metaphysical,  and  literary,  by  a  positive  education, 
conformed  to  the  spirit  of  our  epoch,  and  adapted  to  the 
needs  of  modern  civilization." 

The  teaching  of  science,  then,  shall  be  the  basis  of  educa- 
tion ;  but  this  teaching  will  bear  its  fruits  only  on  one  con- 
dition, and  this  is,  that  at  last  we  renounce  "the  exclusive 
specialty,  the  too  pronounced  isolation,  which  still  charac- 
terizes our  manner  of  conceiving  and  cultivating  the  sciences." 
The  precise  purpose  of  the  Course  in  Positive  Philosophy  was 
to  remedy  the  deleterious  influence  of  a  too  great  specializa- 
tion of  research,  by  establishing  the  relations  and  the  hie- 
rarchy of  the  sciences.  Comte  made  of  mathematics  the 
point  of  departure  in  scientific  instruction.  This  was  the 
very  reverse  of  the  modern  tendency,  which  consists  in  begin- 
ning with  the  concrete  and  physical  studies. 

Auguste  Comte,  in  his  project  for  social  reform,  demanded 
universal  instruction,  and  he  bitterly  complains  of  the  indif- 
ference of  the  ruling  classes  for  the  instruction  of  the  poor. 

"Nothing  is  more  profoundly  characteristic  of  the  exist- 
ing anarch}-  than  the  shameful  indifference  with  which  the 


EDUCATION    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY.      531 

higher  classes  of  to-day  habitually  regard  the  total  absence 
of  popular  education,  the  exaggerated  prolongation  of  which, 
however,  threatens  to  exert  on  their  approaching  destiny  a 
frightful  reaction." 

Cointe  does  not  go  so  far,  however,  as  to  dream  of  an 
identical  education  for  all  men,  an  integral  education,  as  it 
has  been  called.  He  admits  degrees  in  instruction,  "  which," 
he  says,  "  will  allow  varieties  of  extension  in  a  system  con- 
stantly similar  and  identical." 

624.  DDPANLOUP  (1803-1878).  —  Of  all  the  ecclesiastical 
writers  of  our  century,  he  who  has  the  most  ardently  studied 
the  problems  of  education  is  certainly  Bishop  Dupanloup. 
Important  works  give  proof  of  the  educational  zeal  of  the 
eloquent  prelate.     But  they  were  composed  with  more  spirit 
than  wisdom,   and   they  betray  the  zeal  of    the   Christian 
apologist  more  than  the  inspiration  of  an  impartial  love  for 
the  truth.     Extravagances  of  language  and  exaggerations 
of  thought  too  often  prevent  the  reader  from  feeling,  as  he 
ought,  the  moral  and  religious  inspiration  out  of  which  pro- 
ceeded those  books  of  ardent  and  profound  faith,  but  of  faith 
more  than  of   charity.     Notwithstanding   their  length  and 
their  vast  proportions,  these  books  are  pamphlets,  works  of 
combat.     One  should  be  on  his  guard  against  taking  them 
for  scientific  treatises.     Serenity  is  lacking  in  them,  and  from 
the  very  first,  we  feel  ourselves  enveloped  in  an  atmosphere 
of  trouble  and  storm. 

625.  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  TREATISE  ON  EDUCATION.  —  How- 
ever, the  three  volumes  of  the  Education  will  be  read  with 
profit.     The  first  volume  treats  of  education  in  general,  and 
contains  three  books.     In  the  first  book  the  author  determines 
the  character  of  education,  which  has  for  its  purpose  to  culti- 
vate  the   faculties,   to   exercise  them,  to   develop  them,   to 


532  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

strengthen  them,  and,  finally,  to  ]~>olish  them.  In  the  following 
books  the  author  studies  the  nature  of  the  child,  of  whom  he 
sometimes  speaks  with  a  touching  tenderness  ;  and  examines 
the  means  of  education,  which  are  "religion,  instruction, 
discipline,  and  physical  culture."  Discipline  consists  in  sup- 
porting, preventing,  and  repressing.  Discipline  is  to  educa- 
tion "•  that  which  the  bark  is  to  the  tree  which  it  surrounds. 
It  is  the  bark  which  holds  the  sap,  and  forces  it  to  ascend  to 
the  heart  of  the  tree." 

The  general  title  of  the  second  volume  is,  On  Authority 
and  Respect  in  Education.  Authority  and  respect,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  author,  are  the  two  fundamental  things.  From 
this  point  of  view,  he  studies  what  he  calls  the  personnel  of 
education  ;  that  is,  God,  the  parents,  the  teacher,  the  child, 
and  the  schoolmate. 

The  third  volume,  entitled  Educational  Men,  treats  of  the 
qualities  befitting  the  head  master  of  an  educational  estab- 
lishment, and  of  his  different  colleagues.1 

626.  ERRORS  AND  PREJUDICES. — Although  he  wrote  a 
beautiful  chapter  entitled,  Of  the  Respect  due  the  Dignity  of 
the  Child  and  the  Liberty  of  his  Nature,  Dupanloup  is  still 
more  struck  with  the  faults  than  with  the  virtues  of  child- 
hood. He  shudders  in  thinking  of  his  thoughtlessness,  of 
his  curiosity,  of  his  sensualit}-,  and  especially  of  his  pride. 
So  he  distrusts  commendation  and  rewards. 

"  In  praising  your  pupils,"  he  says  to  the  teacher,  '•  do  you 
not  fear  to  excite  their  pride?  The  pride  of  scholars  is  a 
terrible  evil ;  it  begins  in  the  '  third,'  develops  in  the  '  sec- 
ond,' blossoms  in  '  rhetoric,'  and  becomes  established  in 
'  philosophy.' " 2 

1  The  principal  educational  works  of  Dupanloup  are  Education,  1851, 
three  volumes;  De  la  haute  education  intellectuelle,  1855,  three  volumes; 
Lettres  sur  V  education  desfilles,  1879,  one  volume. 

2  See  note  to  page  131. 


EDUCATION   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY.      533 

To  this  mistrust  of  human  nature  is  joined  a  singular 
pessimism  with  respect  to  the  functions  of  the  teacher. 

"  There  is  found,"  he  says,  "  in  this  service,  grave 
troubles.  Sometimes,  if  we  are  worthy  of  this  service,  if  we 
sacrifice  ourselves  to  it,  we  can  find  consolations  in  it,  but 
pleasure,  never ! " 

The  verdict  is  severe  and  absolute,  but  it  recoils  in  part  on 
him  who  pronounces  it.  How  not  mistrust  an  educator  who 
declares  that  there  is  no  sweetness  mingled  with  the  fatigues 
of  teaching,  and  who  condemns  the  teachers  of  youth  to  a 
life  of  complete  sacrifice  and  bitterness? 

The  greatest  fault  in  the  educational  spirit  of  Dupanloup 
is  that  he  does  not  cross  the  narrow  limits  of  an  education  in 
small  seminaries.  Dupanloup  wrote  only  for  the  middle 
classes.  He  had  no  interest  in  popular  education  ;  he  does 
not  love  the  lay  teacher  ;  he  detests  the  University.  Finally, 
he  is  the  man  who  inspired  the  law  of  May  15,  1850. 

627.  THE  SPIRITUALISTIC  SCHOOL  AND  UNIVERSITY  MEN. 
—  The  philosophers  of  the  French  spiritualistic  school  have 
not  in  general  paid  great  attention  to  the  theory  of  education. 
The  most  illustrious  of  them,  Cousin  (1792-1868),  at  the 
same  time  that  he  aided  in  organizing  University  instruction, 
carefully  studied  educational  institutions  abroad,  especially 
in  his  two  works,  Public  Instruction  in  Holland  (1837),  and 
Public  Instruction  in  Germany  (1840).  The  works  of  Jules 
Simon  have  the  same  practical  character,  but  with  a  marked 
tendency  to  treat  by  preference  the  questions  of  primnry 
instruction.  The  School  (1864)  is  a  manifesto  in  favor  of 
gratuity  and  obligation. 

The  University  men,  on  their  part,  have,  in  this  century, 
acted  rather  than  speculated.  They  have  been  intent  rather 
on  making  good  pupils  than  on  composing  theories.  There 


534  THE  HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

would,  however,  be  valuable  truths  to  cull  from  the  works  of 
Cournot,1  of  Bersot,2  and  especially  of  Michel  Bre'al.3 

[G28.  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY.  —  1.  One  of  the  main  charac- 
teristics of  the  educational  thought  of  this  century  is  doubtless 
the  effort  to  deduce  the  rules  of  practice  from  certain  first 
principles.  The  principles  of  instruction  are  to  be  found,  for 
the  most  part,  in  the  science  of  psychology,  and  the  principles 
of  education,  in  part,  in  social  science  and  even  in  jurispru- 
dence. 

2.  The  purpose  of  Napoleon  to  secure  the  perpetuity  of  his 
dynasty  through  the  influence  of  his  Imperial  University,  is 
a  striking  proof  of  the  belief  in  the  potency  of  ideas,  and  of 
the  belief  in  the  potency  of  popular  instruction  as  a  means 
of  national  strength. 

3.  The  history  of  mutual  instruction  exhibits  three  impor- 
tant facts  :  1.  the  effect  of  agitation  in  arousing  public  inter- 
est in  educational  questions  ;  2.  the  manner  in  which  peculiar 
circumstances  suggest  an  expedient  which  can  be  justified  on 
no  absolute  grounds ;  3.  the  danger  of  converting  such  an 
expedient  into  a  "  system"  for  universal  adoption. 

4.  Comenius,  Pestalozzi,  and  Jacotot,  attempted  to  make 
instruction  universal  by  simplifying  its  processes  to  such  a 
degree  that  every  mother  might  be  a  teacher  and  every  house- 
hold a  school. 

5.  In  Comte  we  see  the  re-appearance  of  Coudillac's  doc- 
trine, that  the  historic  education  of  the  race  is  the  type  of 
individual  education.    The  same  hypothesis  will  re-appear  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  Education.'] 

1  Cournot  published  in  18&1  a  remarkable  book  under  this  title  :  DCS  in- 
stitutions d' instruction  publique. 

2  See  the  Essais  de  philoKophie  et  de  morale,  by  E.  Bersot,  and  also  Etudes 
et  discmirs  (1879). 

3  See  especially  the  well-known  book  of  Breal,   Quelques  mots  sur  I' in- 
struction publique  en  France. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE     SCIENCE     OF     EDUCATION.  —  HERBERT     SPENCER 
AND   ALEXANDER  BAIN. 

THE  SCIENCE  OF  EDUCATION  J  THE  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHERS ;  THE  ENG- 
LISH PHILOSOPHERS  ;  HERBERT  SPENCER'S  EDUCATION  J  PLAN  OF 
THE  WORK;  DEFINITION  OF  EDUCATION;  HUMAN  DESTINY;  UTILI- 
TARIAN TENDENCIES  J  DIFFERENT  CATEGORIES  OF  ACTIVITIES  ; 
CRITICISM  OF  MR.  SPENCER'S  CLASSIFICATION  J  EFFECTS  ON 
EDUCATION  J  SCIENCE  IS  THE  BASIS  OF  EDUCATION  ;  SCIENCE  FOR 
HEALTH  AND  INDUSTRIAL  ACTIVITY  ;  SCIENCE  FOR  FAMILY  LIFE  ; 
SCIENCE  FOR  AESTHETIC  ACTIVITY  ;  EXAGGERATIONS  AND  PREJ- 
UDICES J  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  ;  LAWS  OF  MENTAL  EVOLU- 
TION ;  PERSONAL  EDUCATION;  MORAL  EDUCATION;  SYSTEM  OF 
NATURAL  PUNISHMENTS  ;  DIFFICULTIES  IN  APPLICATION  ;  RETURN 
TO  NATURE;  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION;  GENERAL  JUDGMENT;  MR. 
BAIN  AND  THE  SCIENCE  OF  EDUCATION  J  GENERAL  IMPRESSIONS  ; 
DIVISIONS  OF  THE  P.OOK  ;  PSYCHOLOGICAL  ORDER  AND  LOGICAL 
ORDER;  MODERN  EDUCATION;  ERRORS  IN  THEORY;  UTILITARIAN 
TENDENCIES;  FINAL  JUDGMENT;  AMERICAN  EDUCATORS;  CHAN- 
NING;  HORACE  MANN;  CONCLUSION;  ANALYTICAL  SUMMARY. 


629.  THE  SCIENCE  OF  EDUCATION. — To-day,  thanks  to 
important  works,  the  science  of  education  is  no  longer  an 
empty  term,  an  object  of  vague  aspirations  for  philosophers, 
of  easy  ridicule  for  wits.  Doubtless  it  is  far  from  being 
definitely  established  ;  but  it  no  longer  conceals  its  name 
and  its  pretensions  ;  it  defines  its  purpose  and  its  methods  ; 
and  manifests  its  youthful  vitality  in  all  directions. 

Up  to  the  present  period,  philosophers  had  scarcely  thought 
of  organizing  pedagogy,  of  constructing  it  on  a  rational 


536  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

basis.  On  the  other  hand,  the  practice  of  education  is  still 
less  advanced  than  the  conceptions  of  philosophers.  Hero 
we  the  more  often  follow  a  thoughtless  routine,  or  the  vague 
inspirations  of  instinct.  The  methods  in  use  are  not  co- 
ordinated. They  present  a  curious  mixture  of  old  traditions 
and  modern  surcharges.  It  is  this  lack  of  definiteness,  of 
co-ordination  of  ideas,  and  the  spectacle  of  these  contradic- 
tions, which  caused  Richter1  to  say  :  '"  The  education  of  the 
day  resembles  the  Harlequin  of  the  Italian  comedy  who  comes 
on  the  stage  with  a  bundle  of  papers  under  each  arm. 
'What  do  you  carry  under  your  right  arm?'  he  is  asked. 
'  Orders,'  he  replies.  '  And  under  your  left  arm  ? '  '  Counter- 
orders  ! ' ' 

Quite  a  number  of  the  philosophers  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury have  attempted  to  remedy  this  incoherence,  and,  by 
appealing  to  the  scientific  spirit,  to  regulate  educational 
processes  that  have  fallen  into  excesses  of  empiricism  or  of 
routine.  It  is  these  attempts  which  we  are  summarily  to 
recite. 

630.  THE  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHERS. — Since  Kant,  and  by 
his  example,  the  most  of  German  philosophers  have  asso- 
ciated the  theory  of  education  with  their  speculations  on 
human  nature. 

Fichte  (1762-1814),  in  his  Discourse  to  the  German  Na- 
tion, proclaimed  the  necessity  of  a  national  education  to 
secure  the  regeneration  of  his  country  and  its  restoration  to 
its  former  standing.  The  advocate  of  a  public  and  common 
education,  because  he  would  fight  against  the  selfishness 
which  family  life  encourages,  he  contributed  by  his  eloquent 

1  J.  P.  Richter,  better  known  under  the  name  Jean  Paul  (1763-1825),  the 
author  of  a  spirited  and  scholarly  book,  Levana,  or  the  Doctrine  of  Educa- 
tion, 1803. 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  537 

appeals  to  restore  the  intellectual  and  moral  grandeur,  and 
consequently,  the  material  grandeur,  of  Germany. 

Schleiermacher  (17G8-1834)  wrote  a  Doctrine  of  Educa- 
tion, which  was  not  published  till  1849.  In  this  he  develops, 
among  other  ideas,  this  proposition,  that  religious  education 
does  not  belong  to  the  school,  but  that  it  is  the  affair  of  the 
family  and  the  Church. 

Herbart  (1776-1841)  has  composed  a  series  of  pedagogi- 
cal writings  which  assign  him  a  special  place  in  the  list  of 
educational  philosophers.  Let  us  call  attention,  in  particular, 
to  his  General  Pedagogy  (1806),  and  the  Outline  of  my  Les- 
sons on  Pedagogy  (1840).  That  which  distinguishes  Iler- 
bart  is  his  attempt  to  reduce  to  a  system  all  the  rules  of 
pedagogy  by  giving  them  for  a  basis  his  own  psychological 
theory.  He  inaugurated  a  new  method  in  psychology,  which 
does  not  seem,  however,  to  have  given  the  results  that  were 
expected  from  it,  — the  mathematical  method.  For  him,  psy- 
chology is  only  the  mechanism  of  the  mind,  and  by  means  of 
mathematical  formula  calculation  may  be  applied  to  measure 
the  force  of  ideas.  The  soul  does  not  possess  innate  facul- 
ties ;  it  is  developed  progressively. 

But  it  would  require  long  efforts  to  enter  into  the  secrets 
of  Herbart's  original  thought.  Let  it  suffice  to  say,  that 
nurtured  from  an  early  period  on  the  ideas  of  Pestalozzi, 
whose  friend  he  was,  he  has  founded  a  real  school  of 
pedagogy. 

Beneke  (1798-1854)  is  the  author  of  a  Doctrine  of  Educa- 
tion and  Instruction,  which  is,  in  the  opinion  of  Doctor 
Dittes,  a  masterpiece  of  psychological  pedagogy.  Beneke 
agrees  with  Herbart  on  a  great  number  of  points.  His 
pedagogical  methods  have  been  popularized  by  J.  G-.  Dressier, 
director  of  the  normal  school  at  Bauzen,  who  died  in  I860.1 

1  See  The  Elements  of  Psychology,  on  the  Principles  of  Beneke  (Lon- 
don, 1871). 


538  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Charles  Schmidt,  who  died  in  1864,  wrote  a  large  number 
of  works  on  pedagogy,  in  which  he  is  inspired  by  the  phre- 
nology of  Gall  and  his  fantastical  hypotheses.  Doubtless 
this  inspiration  is  not  happy,  and  the  works  of  Schmidt  :u  e 
more  valuable  for  their  details,  for  their  special  reflections, 
than  for  their  general  doctrine.  But  from  his  undertaking 
there  issues  at  least  this  truth,  that  the  science  of  education 
should  have  for  its  basis,  not  only  psychology,  but  physiol- 
ogy also,  the  science  of  the  whole  man,  body  and  mind. 

There  is  no  country  where  pedagogy  has  received  a  more 
philosophical  and  a  higher  development  than  in  Germany. 
Even  the  great  poets,  Lessing,  Herder,  Goethe,  and  Schiller, 
have  contributed  through  certain  grand  ideas  to  the  construc- 
tion of  a  science  of  education. 

631.  THE  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHEKS. — English  philosophy, 
with  its  experimental  and  practical  character,  and  with  its 
positive  and  utilitarian  tendencies,  was  naturally  called  to 
exercise  a  great  influence  on  pedagogy.     There  are  more 
truths  to  gather  from  the  thinkers  who,  in  different  degrees, 
have  followed  Locke  and  Bain,  and  who  have  preserved  a 
taste  for  prudent  observation  and  careful  experiments,  than 
from  the  German  idealists,  enamored  of  hypothesis  and  sys- 
tematic constructions. 

Without  doubt  this  explains  the  considerable  success  which 
the  recent  books  of  Herbert  Spencer  and  Alexander  Bain 
have  obtained  even  in  France. 

632.  THE  BOOK  OF  HERBERT  SPENCER.  —  If  it  were  suffi- 
cient to  define  with  exactness  the  end  to  be  attained,  and  to 
discover  the  true  method  for  constructing  the  science,  Her- 
bert Spencer's  book  on  Education,  Intellectual,  Moral,  and 
Physical,1  would  be  a  satisfactory  treatise  ;  but  it  is  one  thing 

1  The  first  French  translation  appeared  in  1878. 


THE    SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  539 

to  comprehend  that  psychology  is  the  only  solid  basis  of  a 
complete  and  exact  pedagogy,  and  another  thing  to  deter- 
mine the  real  laws  of  psychology. 

"  Education  will  not  be  definitely  systematized,"  says  Mr. 
Spencer,  "  till  the  day  when  science  shall  be  in  possession  of 
a  rational  psychology." 

This  day  has  not  yet  come,  and  Herbert  Spencer,  who  is 
the  first  to  recognize  the  fact,  modestly  presents  his  work 
only  as  an  essay.  But  if  it  does  not  yet  contain  a  perfect 
and  fully  worked  out  theory  of  education,  the  essay  of  the 
English  philosopher  is  at  least  a  vigorous  effort,  and  a  nota- 
ble step  towards  a  rational  pedagogy,  towards  the  science  of 
education,  which,  as  Virchow  expresses  it,  "ought  forever 
to  proscribe  the  gropings  of  an  ignorant  education  whose 
experiments  are  ever  to  be  gone  over  anew." 

633.  PLAN  OF  THE  WORK.  —  Every  system  of  education 
supposes  at  the  same  time  an  ethics,  —  I  mean  a  certain  con- 
ception of  life  and  of  human  destiny,  and  a  psychology, — 
that  is,  a  knowledge  more  or  less  exact  of  our  faculties  and 
of  the  laws  which  preside  over  their  development.  There  are, 
in  fact,  in  education,  two  essential  questions:  1.  What  are 
the  subjects  of  study  and  instruction,  proper  to  create  the 
qualities,  the  aggregate  of  which  constitutes  the  type  of  the 
well-educated  man  ?  2.  By  what  methods  shall  we  teach 
the  child  rapidly  and  well  that  which  it  is  proper  for  him  to 
learn?  There  are,  in  other  terms,  the  question  of  end  and 
the  question  of  means.  Ethics  is  necessary  to  resolve  the 
first,  and  psychology,  to  illustrate  the  second. 
»  It  is  in  accordance  with  this  plan  that  Mr.  Spencer  has 
arranged  the  different  parts  of  his  work.  The  first  chapter, 
entitled  Wlmt  Knoidedge  is  of  Most  Worth?  is  in  substance 
but  a  sei'ies  of  reflections  on  the  final  purpose,  on  the  differ- 


540  THE  HISTORY   OP   PEDAGOGY. 

ent  forms,  of  human  activity,  and,  consequently,  on  the  rela- 
tive importance,  on  the  rank,  which  should  be  assigned  to 
the  studies  which  go  to  compose  a  complete  education. 

In  the  three  other  chapters,  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Phy- 
sical Education,  the  author  examines  the  methods  which  are 
deemed  the  best  for  instructing  the  intelligence,  perfecting 
the  moral  character,  and  fortifying  the  body. 

634.  DEFINITION  OF  EDUCATION. — Herbert  Spencer  begins 
with  a  definition  of  education  :  — 

"Education,"  he  says,  "is  all  that  we  do  for  ourselves, 
and  all  that  others  do  for  us,  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  us 
nearer  the  perfection  of  our  nature.  .  .  .  (  The  ideal  of  edu- 
cation would  be  to  furnish  man  with  a  complete  preparation 

•  for  life  as  a  whole.  \  .  .  Do  not  attempt  to  give  an  exclu- 
sive development  of  one  order  of  knowledge  at  the  expense 
of  the  rest,  however  important  it  may  be.  Let  us  distribute 
our  attention  over  the  whole,  and  justly  proportion  our  efforts 
to  their  relative  value.  .  .  .  /'In  general,  the  object  of  educa- 
tion ought  to  be  to  acquire  as  completely  as  possible  the 
knowledge  that  is  best  adapted  to  develop  individual  and 
social  life  under  all  its  aspects,  and  to  do  no  more  than 
glance  at  the  subjects  which  contribute  the  least  to  this 
development."1  }j*yrtr+*4"  V¥*£&' 

\  This  definition  is  wrong  in  being  a  little  pretentious  and 
in  not  adapting  itself  to  all  the  forms  of  education.  It  is 
true,  perhaps,  if  it  is  a  question  of  the  ideal  to  be  attained  in 
a  complete  instruction,  accessible  to  a  few  privileged  men, 
but  it  could  not  be  applied  to  popular  education.  It  soars 
too  high  above  human  conditions  and  social  realities. 

1  In  this,  as  in  several  other  instances,  Monsieur  Compayre  gives  a  sum- 
mary of  the  author's  thought  rather  than  an  exact  quotation.  (P.) 


THE    SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  541 

635.  HUMAN  DESTINY.  — The  conception  of  human  destiny, 
as  3Ir.  Spencer  outlines  it  in  the  opening  of  his  book,  has 
very    marked    utilitarian    tendencies.       His   first   complaint 
against  the  current  education  is  that  it  sacrifices  the  useful 
to  the  agreeable  ;  that  as  matters  now  go,  everything  which 
pertains  to  mental  adornment  and  display  has  precedence 
over  the  knowledge  which  might  increase  our  well-being  and 
assure  our  happiness.      As  in   the   history   of   dress,   with 
savages   for  example,  it  is  proved  that  the  ornamental  in 
dress   precedes   the   useful ;    so   in  instruction,  ornamental 
studies  are  preferred  to  useful  studies.     This  is  especially 
the  case  with  women,  who  have  a  decided  preference  for  the 
qualities  of  pure  decoration.1 

In  his  rather  vigorous  reaction  against  the  luxuries  which 
in  classical  instruction  would  wrongly  substitute  themselves 
for  more  necessary  studies,  Mr.  Spencer  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  :  — 

"Just  as  the  Orinoco  Indian  paints  and  tattooes  himself, 
so  the  child  in  this  country  learns  Latin  because  it  forms  a 
part  of  the  education  of  a,  gentle  in  an." 

However,  we  do  not  Construe  this  literally.  Mr.  Spencer 
does  not  go  so  far  as  to  suppress  the  disinterested  studies 
which  are  as  much  the  more  necessary  as  the}1  seem  to  be 
the  more  superfluous.  He  merely  demands  that  instruction 
be  not  reduced  to  a  training  in  the  trivial  elegancies  of  a 
dead  language,  or  to  a  study  of  trifles  in  history,  such  as  the 
dates  of  battles,  and  the  birth  and  death  of  princes. 

636.  UTILITARIAN  TENDENCIES.  —  Utility,  that  is,  the  influ- 
ence on  happiness,  — such  is  the  true  criterion  by  which  are 

1  As.  historically,  ornament  precedes  dress,  on  Mr.  Spencer's  main  prin- 
ciple, it  need  not  be  till  late  in  life  that  women  dress  sensibly.  Or  ought  not 
the  genesis  of  dress  in  the  individual  to  follow  the  same  order  as  the  gene- 
sis of  dress  iii  the  race?  (P.) 


542  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

to  be  estimated,  admitted  or  excluded,  and  finally  classified, 
the  subjects  proposed  for  the  study  of  man  as  the  elements 
of  his  education.  It  is  understood,  however,  that  happiness 
is  to  be  considered  in  its  widest  and  highest  sense.  Happi- 
ness does  not  consist  in  the  satisfaction  of  such  or  such  a 
privileged  inclination.  It  consists  in  being  all  that  it  is 
possible  to  be,  —  in  complete  living.  To  prepare  us  for  a 
complete  life,  —  such  is  the  function  of  education. 

637.  DIFFERENT  CATEGORIES  OF  ACTIVITY.  — Complete  life 
supposes  different  kinds  of  activity,  which  ought  to  be  subor- 
dinated one  to  another  according  to  their  importance  and 
dignity.  The  following  statement  shows  how  Mr.  Spencer 
proposes  to  classify  these  diiierent  categories  of  activities 
according  to  an  ascending  scale  of  progress  :  — 

1.  In  the  first  rank  is  placed  the  activity  which  ministers 
simply  to  self-preservation.     It  would  be  of  no  consequence 
to  be  an  eminent  scholar,  or  a  citizen  and  a  patriot,  or  a 
devoted  father ;  or  rather,  all  this  would  be  impossible',  if 
one  did  not  first  know  how  to  assure  his  safety  and  his  life. 

2.  Then  comes  the  series  of  activities  which  tend  indirectly 
to  the  same  end  of  physical  well-being,  by  the  acquisition 
and  production  of  the  material  goods  necessary  for  existence, 
that  is,  industry  and  the  different  occupations. 

3.  In  the  third  place,  man  employs  his  activities  in  the 
service  of  his  family,  —  he  has  children  to  support  and  to 
bring  up. 

4.  Social  and  political  life  is  the   fourth   object   of   his 
efforts.     This  supposes,  as  a  previous  condition,  the  accom- 
plishment of  family  duties,  just  as  family  life  itself  supposes 
the  normal  development  of  the  individual  life. 

5.  Finally,  human  existence  is  consummated  and  crowned, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  exercise  of  the  activities  which,  in  a  single 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  543 

word,  we  might  call  aesthetic,  and  which,  taking  advantage 
of  the  leisure  left  from  care  and  business,  will  find  satisfac- 
tion in  the  culture  of  letters  and  the  arts. 

638.  CRITICISM  OF  THIS  CLASSIFICATION. — What  excep- 
tions can  be  taken  to  this  exact  and  methodical  table  of  the 
different  elements  of  an  existence  complete,  normal,  and 
consequently  human?  Is  it  necessary  to  remark  that  the 
happiness  thus  understood  does  not  differ  from  what  we  call 
virtue?  None  of  the  five  elements  distinguished  by  Mr. 
Spencer  can  be  safely  omitted.  The  first  could  not  be 
neglected  without  endangering  the  material  reality  of  life  ; 
nor  the  last,  without  impairing  its  moral  dignity.  In  some 
degree  they  are  mutually  uecessar}-,  in  this  sense,  that  the 
lower,  or  selfish  activities,  are  the  conditions  which  make 
possible  the  other  parts  of  human  duty  ;  and  that  the  higher, 
or  disinterested  activities,  become,  as  it  were,  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  toil  we  endure  in  order  to  exist  and  to  satisfy 
material  necessities. 

We  have,  however,  one  grave  reserve  to  make.  Mr. 
Spencer  is  wrong  in  putting  into  the  last  categoiy  of  activi- 
ties that  which  is  the  crown  of  the  others,  all  that  which  con- 
cerns the  moral  development  of  the  individual.  Between  the 
second  and  the  third  class  of  activities  we  ask  to  interpolate 
another  form  of  activity, — that  which  constitutes  the  indi- 
vidual moral  life,  that  which,  in  every  man,  even  the  humblest 
and  the  poorest,  calls  into  exercise  the  conscience,  the  rea- 
son, and  the  will.  Mr.  Spencer's  system  is  decidedly  too 
aristocratic.  It  seems  to  reserve  the  moral  life  for  men  of 
leisure.  In  a  democratic  society,  which  believes  in  equality 
and  which  would  not  have  this  an  empty  term,  there  are  ef- 
forts which  must  be  made  for  the  moral  development  of  the 
human  being  in  all  conditions,  and  it  would  be  wrong  to 


544  THE    HISTO11Y    OF    PEDAGOGY. 

reduce  personal  activity  to  the  care  of  health  and  material 
well-being. 

G39.  EFFECTS  ON  EDUCATION. — It  is  now  easy  to  com- 
prehend the  duties  of  education.  Conforming  its  efforts  to 
nature,  distributing  its  lessons  according  to  the  exact  divis- 
ion of  human  functions,  it  will  seek  the  branches  of  knowl- 
edge the  most  fit  for  making  of  the  pupil,  first,  a  sound  and 
healthy  man,  then  a  toiler,  a  workman,  —  a  man,  in  a  word, 
capable  of  earning  his  livelihood ;  then  it  will  train  him  for 
the  family  and  the  State,  by  endowing  him  with  all  the 
domestic  and  civic  virtues ;  finally,  it  will  open  to  him  the 
brilliant  domain  of  art  uuder  all  its  forms. 


640.  SCIENCE  is  THE    BASIS   OF  EDUCATION. — "When  we 
have  once  divided  human  life  into  a  certain  number  of  super- 
imposed stages  which  education  should  teach  us  to  ascend 
one  after  another,  it  becomes  necessary  to  know  what  are  the 
facts  and  the  branches  of  knowledge  which  correspond  to 
each  one  of  these   different   steps.     To  this   question   Mr. 
Spencer  replies  that  in  all  the  grades  of  human  development 
that  which  is  pre-eminently  necessary,  that  which  is  the  basis 
of  education,  is  science. 

641.  SCIENCE  FOR  HEALTH  AND  INDUSTRIAL,  ACTIVITY.  — 
It  is  in  the  first  part  of  education,  that  which  has  for  its  object 
self-preservation,  that  science  is  the   least  useful.     So  far, 
education  may  be  in  great  part  negative,  because  nature  has 
taken  it  upon  herself   to  lead  us  to  our  destination.     The 
child  cries  at  the  sight  of    a  stranger,  and  throws  himself 
into  the  arms  of  his  mother  when  he  feels  the  slightest  sor- 
row.    However,  in  proportion  to  his  growth,  man  has  more 
and  more  need  of  science,  and  he  could  not  do  without  physi- 
ology and  hygiene.     By  this  means  will  he  shun  all  those 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    EDUCATION.  545 

little  acts  of  imprudence,  all  those  physical  faults,  which 
shorten  life,  or  pave  the  way  for  infirmities  in  old  age.  By 
this  means  he  will  diminish  the  interval,  which  is  so  consid- 
erable, between  the  length  of  life  as  it  might  be  and  the 
brevity  of  life  as  it  is.  Evident  truths,  but  too  often  un- 
heeded ! 

"How  many  scholars,"  exclaims  Mr.  Spencer,  "who 
would  blush  if  caught  saying  Iphige"nia  instead  of  Iphigenia, 
show  not  the  slightest  shame  in  confessing  that  they  do  not 
know  where  the  Eustachian  tubes  are,  and  what  are  the 
actions  of  the  spinal  cord  !  " 

With  respect  to  the  activities  which  might  be  called  lucra- 
tive, and  to  the  kind  of  instruction  which  they  require,  Mr. 
Spencer  still  shows  the  utility  of  science.  He  knows  how 
great  a  disposition  there  is  in  modern  society  to  promote  pro- 
fessional or  industrial  instruction  ;  but  he  thinks,  not  without 
reason,  that  we  do  not  proceed  as  we  should  in  order  to  be 
completely  successful  in  this  direction.  All  the  sciences, 
mathematics  through  its  applications  to  the  arts,  mechanics 
through  its  connection  with  industries  whore  machines  play 
so  great  a  part,  physics  and  chemistry  through  the  knowledge 
they  furnish  on  matter  and  its  properties,  even  the  social 
sciences  by  reason  of  the  relations  of  commerce  with  poli- 
tics, —  all  the  sciences,  in  a  word,  contribute  to  develop  the 
skill  and  the  prudence  of  the  man  who  is  employed  in  an}- 
trade  or  occupation  whatever. 

642.  SCIENCE  FOR  FAMILY  LIFE. — A  point  in  which  the 
originality  of  Mr.  Spencer's  thought  is  distinctly  marked, 
and  which  he  develops  with  an  eloquent  earnestness,  is  the 
necessity  of  enlightening  parents,  and  particularly  mothers, 
upon  their  obligations  and  duties,  and  of  putting  them 
in  a  condition  to  direct  the  education  of  their  children  by 


546  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

teaching  them  the  natural  laws  of  body  and  mind :  "Is  it 
not  monstrous,"  he  says,  "  that  the  fate  of  a  new  genera- 
tion should  be  left  to  the  chances  of  unreasoning  custom, 
impulse,  fancy,  —  joined  with  the  suggestions  of  ignorant 
nurses  and  the  prejudiced  counsel  of  grandmothers.  .  .  . 
In  the  actual  state  of  things  the  best  instruction,  even 
among  the  favored  by  fortune,  is  scarcely  more  than  an 
instruction  of  celibates."  "We  are  ever  saying  that  the  voca- 
tion of  woman  is  to  bring  np  her  children,  and  yet  we  teach 
her  nothing  of  that  which  she  ought  to  know  in  order  to  ful- 
fill worthily  this  great  task.  Ignorant  as  she  is  of  the  laws 
of  life  and  of  the  phenomena  of  the  soul,  knowing  nothing 
of  the  nature  of  the  moral  emotions  or  of  physical  disorders, 
her  intervention  in  the  education  of  the  child  is  often  more 
disastrous  than  her  absolute  inaction  would  be. 

643.  SCIENCE   IN  ^ESTHETIC   EDUCATION. — Mr.   Spencer 
next  shows  that  social  and  political  activity  also  has  need  of 
being  enlightened  by  science.     One  is  a  citizen  only  on  the 
condition  of  knowing  the  history  of  his  country. 

That  which  it  is  more  difficult  to  grant  Mr.  Spencer,  is 
that  aesthetic  education,  in  its  turn,  is  based  on  science.  Is 
there  not  some  exaggeration,  for  example,  in  asserting  that 
poor  musical  compositions  are  poor  because  they  are  lack- 
ing in  truth?  and  that  they  are  lacking  in  truth  "because 
they  are  lacking  in  science  "  ?  Does  one  become  a  man  of 
letters  and  an  artist  as  one  becomes  a  geometrician?  To 
cultivate  with  success  those  arts  which  are  as  the  flower  of 
civilization,  is  there  not  required,  besides  talent  and  natural 
gifts,  a  long  practice,  a  slow  initiation,,  something,  in  a 
word,  more  delicate  than  the  attention  which  suffices  for 
being  instructed  in  science? 

644.  EXAGGERATIONS    AND    PREJUDICES. — We  believe  as 
thoroughly  as  any  one  can  in  the  efficiency  and  in  the  educa- 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  547 

tional  virtues  of  science,  and  we  would  willingly  make  it,  as 
Mr.  Spencer  does,  the  basis  of  education.  We  must  be  on 
our  guard,  however,  against  cultivating  this  religion  of 
science  until  it  becomes  a  superstition.  Our  author  is  not 
completely  exempt  from  this  danger. 

That  science  develops  the  intellectual  qualities,  such  as 
judgment,  memory,  reasoning,  we  admit ;  that  it  develops 
them  better  than  the  study  of  the  languages,  let  even  this  be 
granted  !  But  it  is  impossible  for  us  not  to  protest  when  Mr. 
Spencer  represents  science  as  endowed  with  the  same  efficacy 
for  inspiring  moral  qualities,  such  as  perseverance,  sincerit}7, 
activity,  resignation  to  the  will  of  nature,  piety  even,  and 
religion.  Science  appears  to  us  an  infallible  means  of  ani- 
mating and  exciting  the  different  energies  of  the  soul ;  but 
will  it  also  have  the  quality  of  disciplining  them?  Thanks 
to  science,  man  will  know  that  which  it  is  proper  to  do,  if  he 
wishes  to  be  a  workman,  a  parent,  or  a  citizen,  but  on  this 
express  condition,  that  he  wills;  and  this  education  of  the 
will,  is  it  still  science  which  shall  be  charged  with  it?  We 
may  be  allowed  to  doubt  it. 

Mr.  Spencer  himself  now  seems  to  share  this  doubt,  if  we 
may  trust  one  of  his  recent  works.1  "  Faith  in  books  and  in 
nature,"  it  is  there  said,  "  is  one  of  the  superstitions  of  our 
times."  We  deceive  ourselves,  says  the  author,  when  we 
establish  a  connection  between  the  intelligence  and  the  will, 
for  conduct  is  determined  not  by  knowledge  but  by  emo- 
tion. 

"  lie  who  would  hope  to  teach  geometry  by  giving  lessons 
in  Latin,  would  scarcely  be  more  unreasonable  than  those 
who  count  on  producing  better  sentiments  by  means  of  a  dis- 
cipline of  the  intellectual  faculties." 

1  Introduction  to  Social  Science,  p.  390. 


548  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

To  toll  the  truth,  Mr.  Spencer  has  here  fallen  into  another 
extreme,  and  he  seems  to  us  at  one  time  to  have  granted  too 
much,  and  at  another  too  little,  to  the  influence  of  instruction 
on  morality. 

645.  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION.  —  So  far  we  have  exam- 
ined along  with  Mr.  Spencer  only  the  nature  of  the  objects 
and  of  the  knowledge  which  befit  the  education  of  man.     It 
remains  to  inquire  how  the  mind  can  assimilate  this  knowl- 
edge.    Pedagogy  has  not  only  to  draw  up  in  theory  a  bril- 
liant programme  of  necessary  studies,  but  it  also  searches 
o:it  the  means  and  the  methods  to  be  employed,  in  order  that 
these  studies  may  be  presented  to  the  mind,  and  may  have 
the  greater  chance  of  being  thus  presented  with  profit. 

In  this  somewhat  more  practical  part  of  his  work,  Mr. 
Spencer  thinks  that  pedagogy  should  be  guided  by  the  idea 
of  evolution  ;  that  is,  of  the  progressive  course  of  a  being 
who  makes  himself,  who  creates  himself  little  by  little,  and 
who  develops  in  succession,  according  to  fixed  laws,  powers 
originally  enveloped  in  the  germs  that  he  has  received  from 
nature,  or  that  have  been  transmitted  to  him  by  heredity. 

646.  LAWS  OF  INTELLECTUAL  EVOLUTION. — In  other  terms, 
Mr.  Spencer  shows  that  the  precepts  of  pedagogy  cannot  be 
definitely  deduced  until  the  laws  of   mental  evolution  have 
been  accurately  established,  and  he  attempts  to  determine 
some  of  these  laws. 

He  proves  that  the  mind  passes  naturally  from  the  simple 
to  the  complex,  from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite,  from  the 
concrete  to  the  abstract,  from  the  empirical  to  the  rational ; 
that  the  genesis  of  the  individual  is  the  same  as  the  genesis 
of  the  race  ;  that  the  intelligence  assimilates  by  preference 
that  which  it  discovers  for  itself ;  finally,  that  all  culture 
which  profits  the  pupil  is,  at  the  same  time,  an  exercise 
which  stimulates  him  and  delights  him. 


THE   SCIENCE   OF    EDUCATION.  549 

From  this  there  result  these  practical  consequences :  that 
it  is  necessary  first  to  present  to  the  child  simple  subjects  of 
study,  individual  things,  sensible  objects,  for  the  purpose  of 
starting  him  gradually  on  his  way  towards  complex  truths, 
abstract  generalities,  conceptions  of  the  reason  ;  that  noth- 
ing can  be  exacted  of  the  child's  intelligence  but  vague  and 
incomplete  notions  which  the  travail  of  the  mind  will  gradu- 
ally clarify  and  elaborate  ;  that  education  ought  to  be  in 
petto,  for  each  individual,  a  repetition  and  a  cop}'  of  the  gen- 
eral march  of  civilization  and  of  the  progress  of  humanity ; 
that  it  is  necessary  to  count  more  on  the  personal  effort  of 
the  pupil  than  upon  the  action  of  the  teacher ;  that,  finally, 
it  is  necessary  to  find  the  methods  which  interest,  and  even 
those  which  amuse.  Hence  the  educator,  instead  of  oppos- 
ing nature,  instead  of  disconcerting  her  in  her  course  and  in 
the  insensible  steps  of  her  real  development,  will  restrict 
himself  to  following  her  step  by  step,  and  education  will  be 
no  longer  a  force  which  obstructs,  which  represses,  which 
smothers  ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  a  force  which  sustains  and 
stimulates  by  associating  with  itself  the  work  of  the  sponta- 
neous powers  of  the  soul. 

647.  SELF-EDUCATION. — Mr.  Spencer  attaches  great  im- 
portance to  that  maxim  which  recommends  us  to  encourage 
above  all  else  self-education  :  — 

' '  In  education  the  process  of  self -development  should  be 
encouraged  to  the  fullest  extent.  Children  should  be  led  to 
make  their  own  investigations,  and  to  draw  their  own  infer- 
ences. They  should  be  told  as  little  as  possible,  and  induced 
to  discover  as  much  as  possible.  Humanity  has  progressed 
solely  by  self-instruction  ;  and  that  to  achieve  the  best  re- 
sults, each  mind  must  progress  somewhat  after  the  same 
fashion,  is  continually  proved  by  the  marked  success  of  self- 


550  THE   HISTORY   OP  PEDAGOGY. 

made  men.  Those  who  have  been  brought  up  under  the 
ordinary  school-drill,  and  have  carried  away  with  them  the 
idea  that  education  is  practicable  only  in  that  style,  will 
think  it  hopeless  to  make  children  their  own  teachers.  If, 
however,  they  will  call  to  mind  that  the  all-important  knowl- 
edge of  surrounding  objects  which  a  child  gets  in  its  early 
years  is  not  without  help,  —  if  they  will  remember  that  the 
child  is  self-taught  in  the  use  of  its  mother  tongue,  —  if  they 
will  estimate  the  amount  of  that  experience  of  life,  that  out- 
of-school  wisdom  which  every  boy  gathers  for  himself,  —  if 
they  will  mark  the  unusual  intelligence  of  the  uncared-for 
London  gamin,  as  shown  in  all  the  directions  in  which  his 
faculties  have  been  tasked,  —  if  further,  they  will  think  how 
man}'  minds  have  struggled  up  unaided,  not  only  through  the 
mysteries  of  our  irrationally-planned  curriculum,  but  through 
hosts  of  other  obstacles  besides ;  they  will  find  it  a  not  un- 
reasonable conclusion,  that  if  the  subjects  be  put  before  him 
in  right  order  and  right  form,  any  pupil  of  ordinary  capac- 
ity will  surmount  his  successive  difficulties  with  but  little 
assistance." 

648.  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  Moral  education,  without  fur- 
nishing occasion  for  as  complete  a  theory  as  intellectual 
education,  has,  nevertheless,  suggested  to  Mr.  Spencer  some 
important  reflections. 

Mr.  Spencer  expressly  declares  that  he  does  not  accept  the 
dogma  of  Lord  Palmerston,  or  what  would  be  called  in 
France  the  dogma  of  Rousseau,  namely,  that  all  children  are 
born  good.  He  would  incline  the  rather  toward  the  contrary 
opinion,  which,  "  though  untenable,"  he  says,  ''  seems  to  us 
less  wide  of  the  truth  "  !  Doubtless,  we  must  not  expect  too 
much  moral  goodness  of  children  ;  but  it  may  be  found  that 
Mr.  Spencer  exaggerates  a  little,  and  draws  too  dark  a  por- 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  551 

trait  of  the  child  when  he  says,  "  The  child  resembles  the 
savage  ;  his  physical  features,  like  his  moral  instincts,  recall 
the  savage."  Taken  literally,  such  pessimism  would  lead 
logically  to  an  over-severe  moral  discipline,  wholly  repressive 
and  restraining.  Such,  however,  is  not  the  conclusion  of 
Mr.  Spencer,  who  recommends  a  course  of  tolerance  and 
mildness,  a  system  of  relative  letting  alone  which  we  might 
almost  think  dictated  by  the  optimism  of  Rousseau.  He 
censures  the  brutal  discipline  of  the  English  schools.  Finally, 
he  would  have  the  child  treated,  not  as  an  incorrigible  rebel 
who  is  obedient  only  to  force,  but  as  a  reasonable  being 
capable  of  readily  comprehending  the  reasons  and  the  advan- 
tages of  obedience,  from  the  simple  fact  that  he  takes  into 
account  the  connection  of  cause  and  effect. 

649.  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  PUNISHMENTS.  —  The  true  moral 
discipline,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  is  that  which  puts  the 
child  in  a  state  of  dependence  on  nature,  who  teaches  him  to 
detest  his  faults  by  reason  of  the  natural  consequences  which 
they  involve.  It  is  necessary  to  renounce  artificial  punish- 
ments, which  are  almost  always  irritating  and  taken  amiss, 
and  to  have  recourse,  as  a  rule,  only  to  the  privations  and  the 
inconveniencies  which  are  the  necessary  consequences,  and, 
as  it  were,  the  inevitable  reactions,  of  the  acts  which  have 
been  committed. 

A  boy,  for  example,  puts  his  room  in  disorder.  In  this 
case,  the  method  of  natural  punishment  requires  that  he  him- 
self shall  repair  the  mischief ;  and  in  this  way  he  will  soon 
correct  himself  of  a  turbulence  from  which  he  will  be  the  first 
to  suffer. 

A  little  girl,  through  indolence,  or  through  tarrying  too 
long  over  her  toilet,  has  made  herself  late  for  a  walk.  Let 
her  be  punished  by  not  waiting  for  her,  by  leaving  her  at 


552  THE   HISTOKY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

home.     This  is  the  best  means  of  curing  her  in  the  future  of 
her  indolence  and  coquetry. 

The  system  which  tends  thus  to  substitute  the  lessons  of 
nature  for  artificial  penalties,  certainly  offers  great  advan- 
tages. It  subjects  the  child,  not  to  the  authority  of  a  pass- 
ing teacher,  or  of  parents  who  will  one  day  die,  but  to  a  law 
whose  action  neither  ceases  nor  ever  relents.  Artificial  pun- 
ishments often  provoke  the  resistance  of  the  child  because  he 
does  not  comprehend  their  meaning,  and  because,  proceeding 
from  the  human  will,  they  can  be  taxed  with  injustice  and 
caprice.  Could  one  as  easily  refuse  to  bow  before  the  imper- 
sonal force  of  nature, — a  force  which  exactly  adjusts  the 
punishment  to  the  fault,1  which  accepts  no  excuse,  against 
which  there  is  no  appeal,  and  which,  without  threats,  with- 
out anger,  rigorously  and  silently  executes  the  law  ? 

650.  DIFFICULTIES  IN  APPLICATION.  —  Mr.  Spencer's  prin- 
ciple is  excellent,  but  the  opportunities  for  applying  it  are 
far  less  frequent  than  our  philosopher  believes.  The  child, 
in  most  cases,  is  too  little  reflective,  too  little  reasonable,  to 
comprehend,  and  especially  to  heed,  the  suggestions  of  per- 
sonal interest. 

Let  us  add  that  this  principle  is  wholly  negative,  that  it 
furnishes  at  most  only  the  means  of  shunning  evil ;  that  even 
in  according  to  it  an  efficacy  it  does  not  have,  it  would  still 
be  necessary  to  reproach  it  with  narrowing  moral  culture  by 
reducing  it  to  the  rather  mean  solicitude  for  simple  utility  ; 
finally,  that  it  exercises  no  influence  on  the  development  of 
the  positive  virtues,  on  the  disinterested  education  of  moral- 
ity in  what  is  noble  mid  exalted. 

1  So  far  as  experience  can  testify,  this  is  a  pure  assumption.  The  most 
trifling  injuries  are  often  the  most  painful,  and  the  most  serious  the  most 
painless.  (P.) 


THE   SCIENCE   OF    EDUCATION.  553 

Finally,  the  system  of  natural  punishments  would  incur  the 
danger  of  often  being  cruel,  and  of  causing  the  child  an  irrep- 
arable injury.  Let  pass  the  pin-cushion,  the  boiling  water, 
and  the  candle-flame,  —  examples  which  Mr.  Spencer  pro- 
poses ;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  the  bar  of  red-hot  iron  which 
he  lets  the  child  pick  up?  What  shall  be  said,  above  all.  of 
the  grave  consequences  entailed  by  the  faults  of  a  young  man 
left  to  himself? 

"  Would  it  not  be,"  says  Gr£ard  justly,  "  to  condemn  the 
child  to  a  regime  so  severe  as  to  be  an  injustice,  to  count 
solely  on  the  effects  of  natural  reactions  and  inevitable  con- 
sequences, for  the  purpose  of  disciplining  his  will?  The 
penalty  which  the}7  provoke  is  the  most  often  enormous  as 
compared  with  the  fault  which  has  produced  them,  and  man 
himself  demands  for  his  conduct  other  sanctions  than  those 
of  a  harsh  reality.  He  desires  that  we  judge  the  intention 
as  well  as  the  fact ;  that  he  be  commended  for  his  efforts  ; 
that  in  the  first  instance  extreme  measures  be  not  taken 
against  him  ;  that  the  blow  fall  on  him  if  needs  be,  but  with- 
out crushing  him,  and  while  extending  to  him  a  hand  to  help 
him  up."1 

651.  RETURN  TO  NATURE.  —  However  it  may  be,  Mr. 
Spencer  is  to  be  commended  for  having  shown  that  for  moral 
education  as  for  intellectual  education,  the  method  which 
approaches  nature  the  nearest  is  also  the  best.  The  return 
to  nature  which  was  the  characteristic  of  Rousseau's  theories 
and  of  Pestalozzi's  practice,  is  also  the  dominant  trait  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  pedagogy. 

If  we  look  closely  into  the  matter,  this  decided  purpose  to 
follow  nature  implicates  something  besides  the  superficial 

1  See  the  Esprit  de  discipline  dans  l^ducation,  a  memoir  of  Gre'ard, 
published  in  the  Revue  Pe'dctf/oyique,  1883,  No.  11. 


554  THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

condemnation  of  methods  introduced  by  art  and  human  de- 
vice. It  supposes  a  fundamental  belief,  —  the  belief  iu  the 
beneficent  purpose  of  natural  instincts.  To  have  confidence 
in  nature,  to  fall  back  on  the  spontaneous  forces  of  the  soul, 
because  we  discern  behind  them  or  in  them  a  higher  provi- 
dence or  an  internal  foresight,  is  a  belief  generally  useful  and 
suggestive  for  conducting  human  affairs,  but  particularly 
necessary  for  directing  the  education  of  man.  It  is  not 
without  some  surprise  that  we  discover  this  belief  at  the  basis 
of  Mr.  Spencer's  pedagogy,  as  though,  by  a  contradiction 
which  is  not  new,  the  evolutionist  philosophy,  which  seems 
to  exclude  final  causes  from  the  conception  of  the  universe, 
had  been  practically  constrained  to  bow  before  them,  and  to 
proclaim,  at  least  in  the  matter  of  education,  the  salutary 
efficacy  of  the  theory  which  admits  them. 

Thus,  in  speaking  of  physical  education,  Mr.  Spencer 
remarks  that  the  sensations  are  the  natural  guides,  which  it 
would  be  dangerous  not  to  follow. 

"  Happily,  that  all-important  part  of  education  which  goes 
to  secure  direct  self-preservation,  is  in  great  part  already 
provided  for.  Too  momentous  to  be  left  to  our  own  blunder- 
ing, Nature  takes  it  into  her  own  hands." 

Speaking  in  another  •  place  of  the  instincts  which  induce 
the  child  to  move  himself  and  to  seek  in  physical  exercise  the 
basis  of  physical  well-being,  he  declares  that  to  oppose  these 
instincts  would  be  to  go  counter  to  the  means  "  divinely 
arranged  "  for  assuring  the  development  of  the  body. 

652.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION.  — The  chapter  devoted  by  Mr. 
Spencer  to  physical  education,  is  such  as  might  be  expected 
from  a  thinker  who  is  wholly  exempt  from  idealistic  preju- 
dices and  who  does  not  hesitate  to  write  :  — 

"The  history  of  the  world  shows  that  the  well-fed  races 
have  been  the  energetic  and  dominant  races." 


THE    SCIENCE   OF    EDUCATION.  555 

It  is  necessary  first  and  above  all  to  establish  physical 
force  in  man,  and  to  create  within  him  "  a  robust  animal." 

"  The  actual  education  of  children  is  defective  in  several 
particulars :  in  an  insufficiency  of  food,  in  an  insufficiency 
of  clothing,  in  an  insufficiency  of  exercise,  and  in  an  excess 
of  mental  application." 

Mr.  Spencer  complains  that  modern  education  has  become 
wholly  intellectual,  and  that  it  neglects  the  bod}-.  He 
reminds  ns  that  "  the  preservation  of  health  is  one  of  our 
duties,"  and  that  there  exists  a  thing  which  might  be  called 
"  physical  morality." 

Here,  as  everywhere,  Mr.  Spencer  demands  that  we  follow 
the  indications  of  nature.  He  explains  on  physiological 
grounds  the  apparently  inordinate  appetite  which  children 
show  for  certain  foods,  —  sugar,  for  example.  He  urgently 
entreats  that  preference  shall  be  given  to  play  and  to  free 
and  spontaneous  exercise,  over  gymnastics. 

653.  GENERAL  JUDGMENT. — That  which,  in  our  opinion, 
attests  the  truth  of  the  pedagogical  laws  which  we  have  just 
discussed,  is  that  they  are  in  agreement  with  the  general 
opinions  of  the  great  modern  reformers  in  education.  It  is 
thus  that  Spencer's  ideas  are  in  close  harmony  with  those 
which  Pestalozzi  had  employed  at  Stanz.  The  success  which 
he  obtained  there,  as  Mr.  Spencer  has  remarked,  depended 
on  two  things :  first,  on  the  attention  which  he  used  in 
determining  what  kind  of  instruction  the  children  had  need 
of,  and  next,  on  the  pains  he  took  to  associate  the  new  knowl- 
edge with  that  which  they  already  possessed^. 

Mr.  Spencer's  essay,  then,  deserves  the  attention  of  edu- 
cators. There  is  scarcely  a  book  in  which  a  keen  scent  for 
details  comes  more  agreeably  to  animate  a  fund  of  solid 
arguments,  and  from  which  it  is  more  useful  to  extract  the 


556  THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 

substance,  However,  it  must  not  be  read  save  with  precau- 
tion. The  brilliant  English  thinker  sometimes  fails  iu  just- 
ness and  measure,  and  his  bold  generalizations  need  to  be 
tested  with  care. 

654.  ALEXANDER  BAIN  AND  EDUCATION  AS  A  SCIENCE.— 
Less  brilliant  than  the  work  of  Mr.  Spencer,  the  book  of 
Mr.   Bain,   Education  as  a  Science,  recommends  itself  by 
merits  of  studied  analysis  and  scholarl}-  minuteness.     Others 
surpass  Mr.  Bain  in  brilliancy  of  imagination,  in  originality 
and  in  enthusiasm  ;    but  no  one  equals  him  in  richness  of 
details,  in  acuteness  and  abundance  of  observations.     After 
the  more  venturesome  have  taken  the  lead  and  have  pub- 
lished the  original  sketch,  Mr.  Bain  appears  and  writes  the 
methodical  and  complete  manual.     His  own  work  resembles 
that  of  a  conscientious  guard  who  marches  in  the  rear  of 
a  victorious  arm}',  and  by  a  wise  organization  makes  sure 
the   positions   conquered   by   the   march    of    an   impetuous 
commander-in-chief.     His  book,  in  other  terms,  is  but  the 
studious  and  thorough  development  of  Mr.  Spencer's  prin- 
ciples. 

655.  GENERAL  IMPRESSION. — It  is  impossible  in  an  analy- 
sis to  bring  out  the  merit  of  a  book  which  is  especially 
valuable    for   the   multiplicity   of  the   questions  which    the 
author  discusses  in  it,  and   for  the  infinite  variety  of  the 
solutions  which  he  proposes.     There  are  landscapes  which 
discourage     the     painter,    because,    notwithstanding    their 
beauty,  they  are  too  vast,  too  full  of  details,  to  admit  of 
being  crowded  into  a  frame.     We  may  say  the  same  of  Mr. 
Bain's  book.     One  must  have  studied  it  himself  in  order  to 
form  an  estimate  of  its  value.     Professors  of  all  classes  will 
here  find  pages  of  well-considered  counsels,  and  judicious 
reflections  upon  educational  methods.     The  nature  of  stud- 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  557 

ies,  the  sequence  of  subjects,  the  gradation  of  difficulties, 
the  choice  of  exercises,  the  comparison  of  oral  instruction 
with  text-book  instruction,  modes  of  discipline,  —  nothing 
escapes  a  thinker  who  is  not  a  mere  theorist  or  an  amateur 
educator,  but  a  professional  man,  a  competent  teacher,  an 
experienced  professor. 

Indeed,  no  one  should  allow  himself  to  be  deceived  by  this 
fine  phrase,  Education  as  a  Science,  which  might  disconcert 
and  turn  aside  whole  classes  of  readers,  such  as  those  who, 
in  works  on  education,  especially  desire  a  guide  for  practice. 
On  the  contrary,  they  will  have  every  reason  to  commend  a 
book  which  passes  very  quickly  from  generalities  to  applica- 
tions, and  which  is  above  all  else  a  manual  of  practical  and 
technical  pedagogy.  The  stud}'  of  it  will  be  profitable  not 
merely  to  professors  who  are  teaching  the  higher  branches  of 
literature  and  science,  but  even  to  the  humblest  instructors, 
and  even  —  for  Mr.  Bain  overlooks  no  detail  —  to  teachers 
of  reading  and  writing. 

656.  DIVISION  OF  THE  WORK. — Education  as  a  Science 
comprises  three  parts:  1.  psychological  data ;  2.  methods; 
3.  modern  education. 

The  author  first  inquires  in  what  order  the  faculties  are 
developed,  and  what  effect  this  order  should  have  on  the 
distribution  of  studies.  This  is  the  psychological  part. 
Then  follows  a  discussion  of  what  Mr.  Bain  calls  the  logical 
order,  that  is,  of  the  relations  which  exist  between  the 
studies  themselves  and  their  different  parts.  This  is  the 
"  analytical  problem  "  of  education.1 

These   preliminaries   being  established,   Mr.   Bain  enters 

1  By  the  "analytical  problem  "  of  education,  Mr.  Bain  means  the  deter- 
mining of  the  education  value  of  subjects.  See  Education  as  a  Science, 
Chapter  V.  (P.) 


558  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

upon  the  principal  theme,  —  the  methods  of  instruction.  He 
discusses  one  after  another  the  first  elements  of  reading, 
object-lessons,  "  which,  more  than  any  other  means  of 
instruction,  require  to  be  practised  with  care,  for  without 
this,  an  admirable  process  might,  in  unskillful  hands,  be 
nothing  more  than  a  thing  of  seductive  appearance,  but  with- 
out value"  ;  then  methods  relating  to  histor}-,  geography,  the 
sciences,  and  the  languages. 

Finally,  in  his  third  book,  Mr.  Bain  exhibits  a  new  plan  of 
study,  with  particular  reference  to  secondary  instruction. 

657.  PSYCHOLOGICAL  ORDER  AND   LOGICAL  ORDER.  —  In 
his  reflections  on  the  development  of  the  mind  and  upon  the 
distribution  of  studies,  Mr.  Bain  is  inspired  by  the  prin- 
ciples which  have  guided  Mr.  Spencer. 

"Observation  precedes  reflection.  The  concrete  comes 
before  the  abstract." 

In  education,  then,  the  sequence  should  be  from  the  sim- 
ple to  the  complex,  from  the  particular  to  the  general,  from 
the  indefinite  to  the  definite,  from  the  empirical  to  the  rational, 
from  analysis  to  synthesis,  from  the  outline  to  details  ;  finally, 
from  the  material  to  the  immaterial. 

Such  would  be  the  ideal  order  in  education ;  but  Mr.  Bain 
remarks  that  in  practice  all  sorts  of  obstacles  come  to  disturb 
this  rigorous  sequence. 

658.  MODERN  EDUCATION.  — The  plan  of  secondary  studies 
which  Mr.  Bain  recommends  to  the  reformers  of  teaching  is 
the  result  and  the  resume  of  all  these  observations. 

Intellectual  education,  common  to  all  young  people  who 
receive  a  liberal  instruction,  would  henceforth  comprise  three 
essential  parts  :  1 .  the  sciences  ;  2.  the  humanities  ;  3.  rhet- 
oric and  the  national  literature.  We  see  at  once  what  is  to 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  559 

be  understood  by  this  last  item  ;  but  the  two  others  have 
need  of  some  explanations. 

The  sciences  are  divided  into  two  groups  :  those  which  are 
to  be  mastered,  —  arithmetic,  geometry,  algebra,  physics, 
chemistry,  biology,  psychology ;  and  the  natural  sciences, 
which  should  be  studied  only  superficially  because  they  would 
overwhelm  the  memory  under  the  weight  of  too  large  a  num- 
ber of  facts.  Geography,  which,  one  does  not  know  why,  is 
included  in  the  sciences,  while  history  is  attached  to  the  hu- 
manities, will  complete  the  programme  of  scientific  studies. 

As  to  the  humanities,  Mr.  Bain  preserves  scarcely  more 
than  the  name  while  suppressing  the  thing ;  for  in  the  cur- 
tailed and  disfigured  domain  which  he  persists  in  calling  by 
this  name,  he  cuts  off  precisely  that  which  has  always  been 
considered  as  constituting  its  essence,  —  the  study  of  the 
dead  languages.  He  excludes  from  it  even  the  living  lan- 
guages, and  that  which  he  still  decorates  with  the  fine  title 
of  humanities,  is  still  science, — moral  science,  it  is  true, — 
"  history  and  sociology  with  political  economy  and  jurispru- 
dence." 

A  course  in  universal  literature,  but,  be  it  understood, 
without  original  texts,  might  afterwards  be  added  to  this  pre- 
tended teaching  of  the  humanities. 

Two  or  three  hours  a  week  would  be  devoted  parallelly, 
during  the  whole  course  of  study,  which  would  last  six  years, 
to  each  of  the  three  departments  of  instruction  which  Mr. 
Bain  thinks  equally  important. 

As  to  the  real  humanities,  dead  or  living  languages,  they 
should  no  longer  be  included  in  education  save  as  optional 
and  extra  studies,  on  the  same  basis  as  the  accomplishments. 
And,  appealing  to  the  future,  Mr.  Bain  even  predicts  that 
"a  day  will  come  when  it  will  be  found  that  this  is  still 
granting  them  too  large  a  place  in  education." 


560  THE   HISTORY    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

Mr.  Bain,  then,  gives  all  his  preferences  to  scientific 
studies,  and  his  book  might  properly  be  entitled,  not  only 
Education  as  a  Science,  but  also  Science  in  Education. 

659.  THEORETICAL  ERRORS.  — Mr.  Bain  reproaches  letters 
with  giving  the  mind  the  habit  of  servility.  By  what  sin- 
gular revulsion  of  thought  can  the  liberal  studies  par  excel- 
lence be  represented  as  a  school  of  intellectual  servitude  ?  It 
is  rather  to  scientific  instruction  that  we  may  properly  return 
the  accusation  of  enslaving  the  spirit.  By  their  inexorable 
evidence  and  by  their  very  exactness,  do  not  the  sciences 
sometimes  smother  the  originality  and  the  free  flight  of  the 
imagination? 

This  defect,  however,  does  not  cut  them  off  from  a  right 
to  a  place,  and  to  a  large  place,  in  the  programme  of  intel- 
lectual education.  Let  us  accept  with  favor  their  alliance, 
let  us  admit  them  to  a  certain  degree  of  fellowship,  but  do 
not  let  us  tolerate  their  encroachments.  In  a  word,  the  ob- 
ject of  the  sciences  is  either  pure  abstractions  or  material 
realities.  He  who  studies  mathematics  and  physics  first  ac- 
quires real  knowledge  of  high  value  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  strengthens  his  mind  through  the  habits  engendered  by 
the  rigorous  methods  which  the  sciences  employ.  We  cheer- 
fully grant  to  Mr.  Bain  that  the  sciences  are  at  the  same  time 
admirable  sources  of  useful  truths  and  valuable  instruments 
of  mental  discipline.  By  cultivating  them  we  gain  not  only 
the  positive  knowledge  which  they  teach  respecting  the  world, 
but  also  the  power,  rigor,  and  exactness  which  they  impose 
on  their  adepts. 

GGO.  INSUFFICIENCY  OF  THE  SCIENCES.  — But  the  question  is 
to  know  whether  the  sciences,  so  useful  and  so  necessary  for 
enriching  and  disciplining  the  mind,  are  also  the  best  agents 
for  training  it.  The  educator  is  not  in  the  situation  of  the 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  561 

farmer  who  has  only  two  things  to  do,  —  to  plow  and  sow 
the  field  which  he  cultivates.  The  work  of  education  is  vast 
in  another  direction.  It  has  to  do  with  developing  the  apti- 
tudes or  latent  energies,  that  which  the  philosophy  of  the  day 
hardly  allows  us  longer  to  call  faculties,  but  that  which  they 
re-establish  under  another  name,  that  of  the  unconscious 
forces  of  the  soul ;  it  has  to  do,  not  with  laboring  on  a  soil 
almost  entirely  prepared  by  nature,  but  in  great  part  with 
creating  the  soil  itself.  Now,  the  sciences  are  indeed  the 
seed  which  it  will  be  proper  by  and  by  to  sow  on  the  field,  but 
they  are  not  the  substance  which  nourishes  and  fertilizes  it. 

661.  SENSUALISTIC  TENDENCIES.  —  If  we  go  to  the  bottom 
of  Mr.  Bain's  thought  and  doctrine  on  the  mind,  we  shall 
find  the  secret  of  his  ardent  preference  for  the  teaching  of 
the  sciences.  His  errors  in  practical  pedagogy  proceed  from 
theoretical  errors  on  human  nature. 

For  him,  as  for  Locke,  there  are  not,  properly  speaking, 
intellectual  forces  independent  of  the  facts  which  succeed 
one  another  in  the  consciousness.  Consequently,  there  is 
not  an  education  of  the  faculties.  Memory  or  imagination, 
considered  as  a  distinct  power,  as  an  aptitude  more  or  less 
happy,  is  but  a  word.  It  is  nothing  apart  from  the  recollec- 
tions or  the  images  which  are  successively  graven  in  the  mind. 
For  Mr.  Bain,  as  for  Locke,  the  best  education  is  that  which 
places  items  of  knowledge  side  by  side  in  the  mind,  which 
accumulates  facts  there,  but  not  that  which  seeks  to  enkindle 
in  the  soul  a  flame  of  intelligence. 

That  which  also  warps  the  theoretical  views  of  Mr.  Bain 
is  that  he  accords  no  independence,  no  individual  life,  to  the 
mind  ;  and  that  for  him,  back  of  the  facts  of  consciousness, 
there  come  to  view,  without  any  intermedium,  the  cerebral 
organs.  Now  the  brain  is  developed  of  itself ;  it  acquires 


562  THE   H1STOBY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

fatally,  with  the  progress  of  }'ears,  more  weight  and  more 
volume  ;  it  passes  from  the  age  of  concrete  things  to  the  age 
of  abstractions.  Hence  a  reduction,  an  inevitable  contrac- 
tion, of  the  sphere  of  education.  There  is  nothing  more  to 
do  than  to  let  nature  have  her  way,  and  to  fill  the  vase  which 
she  charges  herself  with  constructing. 

062.  UTILITARIAN  TENDENCIES.  —  Finally,  to  conclude  this 
indication  of  the  general  ideas  which  dominate  and  which 
mar  the  pedagogy  of  Mr.  Bain,  let  us  observe  that  a  positive 
and  practical  utility,  a  vulgar  utility,  mingles  too  many  of 
its  inspirations  with  it.  The  criterion  of  utility  is  some- 
times applied  to  it  with  an  artless  extravagance.  Thus,  in 
the  languages,  only  those  words  should  be  learned  which 
occur  the  most  often,  and  in  the  sciences,  only  the  parts 
which  are  of  the  most  frequent  use.  Even  in  moral  educa- 
tion, as  it  is  conceived  by  the  English  philosopher,  are  to  be 
found,  as  we  might  expect,  these  utilitarian  and  narrow 
views. 

Would  one  believe,  for  example,  that  Mr.  Bain  makes 
the  fear  of  the  penal  code  the  mainspring  of  the  teaching 
of  virtue  ? J  Here,  at  least,  we  must  acknowledge  that  sci- 
ence is  insufficient.  "  To  pretend,  for  example,  that  physi- 
ology can  teach  us  moderation  in  the  sexual  appetite  is  to 
attribute  to  it  a  result  which  no  science  has  }'et  been  able  to 
give."  But  must  we  count  any  more,  as  Mr.  Bain  would 

1  We  might  dwell  on  Mr.  Bain's  observations  relative  to  punishments. 
Here  is  what  Gre'ard  says  of  them  :  "  Mr.  Bain,  with  infinite  good  sense 
and  disciplinary  tact,  is  much  less  concerned  with  applying  the  rule  than 
with  the  conditions  according  to  which  it  should  be  applied.  On  this  point 
he  enters  into  details  full  of  scruples.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  call  to  his 
aid  the  knowledge  of  the  masters  of  penal  jurisprudence,  and  his  recom- 
mendations, added  to  those  of  Beutham,  comprise  not  less  than  thirty 
articles." 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  563 

have  us,  for  example,  on  social  influences  and  on  personal 
experience?  In  this  truly  experimental  education  in  virtue, 
ethics  would  be  learned  just  as  the  mother  tongue  is  learned, 
by  use,  by  the  imitation  of  others  ;  and  moral  instruction, 
properly  so  called,  would  be  a  sort  of  grammar  which  is  to 
rectify  vicious  practices. 

G63.  FINAL  JUDGMENT. — But  our  criticisms  on  the  gen- 
eral tendencies  of  Mr.  Bain's  pedagogy  subtract  nothing  from 
our  admiration  of  the  sterling  qualities  of  his  Education  as  a 
Science.  Doubtless  there  would  also  be  errors  of  detail  to 
notice,  or  some  particular  methods  to  discuss  ;  for  example, 
that  of  never  doing  more  than  one  thing  at  a  time,  or  the  pro- 
priety of  first  teaching  to  children  the  history  of  their  country. 
Mr.  Bain  forgets  that  mythological  history  and  sacred  his- 
tory, by  their  legendary  and  fabulous  character,  offer  a  par- 
ticular attraction  to  the  childish  imagination,  and  are  better 
adapted  than  history  proper  to  infant  minds.  But,  aside 
from  the  portions  which  are  debatable,  how  many  wise  obser- 
vations to  gather  on  the  different  .processes  of  instruction, 
on  the  transition  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract,  on  the 
discretion  which  must  be  employed  in  object-lessons,  the  use 
of  which  so  easily  degenerates  into  abuse  !  Even  through 
its  absolute  theories,  Education  as  a  Science  will  render 
great  services  ;  for,  to  illustrate  the  march  of  thought,  noth- 
ing is  so  valuable  as  opinions  which  are  exclusive  and  sin- 
cere. It  were  even  desirable,  if  one  did  not  fear  to  experi- 
ment on  human  souls,  in  anima  sublimi,  that  according  to 
Mr.  Bain's  plan,  the  experiment  should  be  tried  of  an  educa- 
tion exclusively  scientific. 

6G4.  AMERICAN  EDUCATORS.  CHANNING  (1780-1842). — 
The  general  fault  of  English  pedagogy  is  its  aristocratic 
character.  For  Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr.  Bain,  as  for  Locke,  it 


564  THE    HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

is  simply  a  question  of  the  education  of  a  gentleman.  It  is 
in  America,  in  the  writings  of  Chauning  and  Horace  Mann, 
that  we  must  seek  the  elements  of  a  theory  of  democratic 
education,  and  of  popular  instruction.1 

Charming,  a  Unitarian  minister,  associated  religious  senti- 
ment and  philosophic  reason,  and  desired  that  in  theology 
itself  everything  should  issue  in  the  supremacy  of  the  human 
judgment.  The  most  interesting  of  his  writings  are  the  pub- 
lic lectures  which  he  gave  in  Boston  in  1838,  and  the  object 
of  which  is  the  education  one  gives  himself,  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  working  classes.  We  lack  the  space  to  give  an 
analysis  of  these  lectures,  but  a  few  quotations  will  make 
known  the  general  spirit  of  the  American  reformer  :  — 

"I  am  not  discouraged  b}"  the  objection  that  the  laborer, 
if  encouraged  to  give  time  and  strength  to  the  elevation  of 
his  mind,  will  starve  himself  and  impoverish  the  country, 
when  I  consider  the  energy,  and  the  efficiency  of  Mind. 

"The  highest  force  in  the  universe  is  Mind.  This  created 
the  heavens  and  earth.  This  has  changed  the  wilderness  into 
frnitfulness,  and  linked  distant  countries  in  a  beneficent  min- 
istry to  one  another's  wants.  It  is  not  to  brute  force,  to 
physical  strength,  so  much  as  to  art,  to  skill,  to  intellectual 
and  moral  energy,  that  men  owe  then*  mastery  over  the  world. 
It  is  mind  which  has  conquered  matter.  To  fear,  then,  that 
bv  calling  forth  a  people's  mind,  we  shall  impoverish  and 
starve  them,  is  to  be  frightened  at  a  shadow." 

"  It  is  chiefly  through  books  that  we  enjoy  intercourse  with 
superior  minds,  and  these  invaluable  means  of  communication 
are  in  the  reach  of  all.  In  the  best  books,  great  men  talk  to 
us,  give  us  their  most  precious  thoughts,  and  pour  their  souls 

1  There  should  be  added  to  these  the  works  of  Swiss,  Italian,  and  French 
educators,  particularly  of  Siciliani,  and  the  original  and  eminently  sugges- 
tive studies  of  Bernard  Perez. 


THE    SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  565 

into  ours.  God  be  thanked  for  books.  They  are  the  voices 
of  the  distant  and  the  dead,  and  make  us  heirs  of  the  spiritual 
life  of  past  ages.  Books  are  the  true  levellers.  They  give 
to  all,  who  will  faithfully  use  them,  the  society,  the  spiritual 
presence,  of  the  best  and  greatest  of  our  race.  No  matter 
how  poor  I  am ;  no  matter  though  the  prosperous  of  my  own 
time  will  not  enter  my  obscure  dwelling  ;  if  the  sacred  writers 
will  enter  and  take  up  their  abode  under  my  roof,  if  Milton 
will  cross  my  threshold  to  sing  to  me  of  Paradise,  and  Shake- 
speare to  open  to  me  the  worlds  of  imagination  and  the 
workings  of  the  human  heart,  and  Franklin  to  enrich  me  with 
his  practical  wisdom,  I  shall  not  pine  for  want  of  intellectual 
companionship,  and  I  may  become  a  cultivated  man  though 
excluded  from  what  is  called  the  best  society  in  the  place 
where  I  live." 

665.  HORACE  MANN  (1796-1859).  —  Horace  Mann  is  not 
a  philosopher  who  discusses  education,  but  a  politician  who 
reformed  and  developed  the  education  of  his  country.  Secre- 
tary of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education,  he  opened 
schools,  founded  libraries,  and  pronounced  a  great  number  of 
discourses,  the  best  known  of  which  is  TJie  Necessity  of 
Education  in  a  Republican  Government. 

"When,  then,"  he  often  said,  "will  men  give  their  thought 
to  infancy?  We  watch  the  seed  which  we  confide  to  the 
earth,  but  we  do  not  concern  ourselves  with  the  human  soul 
till  the  sun  of  youth  has  set.  Were  it  in  my  power,  I  would 
scatter  books  over  all  the  earth  as  men  sow  wheat  on  the 
plowed  fields." 

Speaking  to  Americans,  to  working  people,  and  to  trades- 
men, he  made  apparent  the  positive  advantages  of  instruc- 
tion :  — 

"  If  to-morrow  some  one  were  to  tell  you  that  a  coal  mine 


566  THE   HISTORY  OF   PEDAGOGY. 

had  been  discovered  which  would  pay  ten  per  cent,  3-011  would 
all  rush  to  it ;  and  yet  there  are  men  whom  you  let  grovel  in 
ignorance  when  you  might  realize  from  forty  to  fifty  per  cent 
on  them.  You  are  ever  giving  your  thought  to  capital  and 
to  machines  ;  but  the  first  machine  is  man,  and  the  first  capi- 
tal, man,  and  you  neglect  him." 

But  he  also  interested  himself  in  the  moral  effects  of  edu- 
cation, especially  in  a  democratic  society,  where  each  citizen 
is  a  sovereign  :  — 

"The  education  which  has  already  been  given  a  people 
makes  it  necessary  to  give  them  more.  By  instructing  them. 
new  powers  have  been  awakened  in  them,  and  this  intellectual 
and  moral  energy  must  be  regulated.  In  this  case  we  have 
not  to  do  with  mechanical  forces,  which,  once  put  in  action, 
accomplish  their  purpose  and  then  stop.  No  ;  these  are  spir- 
itual forces  endowed  with  a  principle  of  life  and  of  progress 
which  nothing  can  quench." 

666.  CONCLUSION.  —  The  labors  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr. 
Bain,  the  works  of  Channing  and  Mann,  and  others  still, 
will  contribute,  we  hope,  to  prepare  the  definite  solutions 
demanded  by  our  times  in  the  matter  of  education.  These 
solutions  are  important  for  the  security  and  the  greatness  of 
our  country.  More  than  ever  it  is  necessary  that  education 
become  something  else  than  an  affair  of  inspiration,  aban- 
doned to  caprice  and  hazard,  but  that  it  be  a  work  of  reflec- 
tion. It  is  said  that  the  future  is  uncertain,  that  events  arc 
leading  French  society  no  one  knows  where,  and  that  our 
destinies  are  at  the  mercy  of  the  most  unforeseen  storms. 
We  do  not  believe  this,  since  it  is  within  our  power  that  it 
shall  be  otherwise.  There  is  a  means,  in  fact,  of  assuring 
the  future  of  peoples,  and  this  is  to  give  them  an  intellectual 
and  moral  education  which  purifies  the  soul  and  strengthens 


THE   SCIENCE   OF   EDUCATION.  567 

character.  Do  not  let  us  look  for  regeneration  and  progress 
from  a  sudden  and  miraculous  transformation  ;  do  not  let  us 
demand  them  even  of  the  immediate  efficiency  of  such  or 
such  a  political  institution.  Everything  here  below  is  accom- 
plished according  to  the  laws  of  a  slow  progression,  by 
trifling  and  successive  modifications.  Just  as  for  the  child 
there  is  no  abridgment  which  allows  us  to  suppress  the 
slow  steps  of  the  insensible  growth  which  each  year  brings 
forward,  so  for  nations  there  is  no  other  process  than  the 
action,  slow  but  sure,  of  a  wise  and  vigorous  education,  for 
causing  them  to  pass  from  vice  to  virtue,  from  abasement  to 
grandeur. 

The  partisans  of  evolution  sometimes  seem  to  announce 
to  us  the  near  apparition  of  a  race  superior  to  our  '»wn, 
called  to  supplant  us,  as  we  shall  have  supplanted  the  infe- 
rior races.  One  day  or  another  we  shall  be  liable,  it  seems, 
to  meet  "at  the  angle  of  a  rock"  the  successor  of  the 
human  race.  We  count  but  little  on  such  promises,  and  the 
coming  of  this  hypothetical  race  of  men,  suddenly  evoked 
by  a  wave  of  the  magic  wand  of  natural  selection,  leaves  us 
very  incredulous. 

Happily,  we  know  another  means,  a  much  .surer  process, 
for  causing  to  appear,  not  a  strange  race,  until  now  un- 
known, but  generations  of  more  worth  than  our  own,  which 
are  superior  to  it  in  physical  force,  as  in  qualities  of  mind 
or  virtues  of  character.  This  means  is  to  establish,  through 
reflection  and  reason,  an  education  better  adapted  to  our 
destination  ;  an  education  broader  and  more  complete,  at 
once  more  severe  and  more  liberal,  since  it  will  at  the  same 
time  exact  more  toil  and  permit  more  scope  ;  in  which  the 
child  will  learn  to  count  more  on  himself  ;  in  which  his  indo- 
lence will  no  longer  be  encouraged  by  accustoming  him 
inopportunely  to  invoke  supernatural  aid  ;  in  which  instruc- 


568  THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 

tion  will  no  longer  be  a  formulary  recited  as  lip-service,  but 
an  inner  and  profound  acquisition  of  the  soul,  in  which  the 
fear  of  the  conscience  will  be  substituted  for  the  other  rules 
of  conduct,  and  in  which  thought  and  free  reflection  will  no 
longer  be  distrusted  ;  finally,  an  education  more  scientific 
and  more  rational,  because  it  will  neglect  nothing  which  can 
develop  a  human  soul  and  bring  it  into  likeness  with  its 
ideal.  Now  that  education  to  which  the  future  belongs, 
notwithstanding  the  obstacles  which  the  spirit  of  the  past 
will  still  stir  up  against  it,  — that  education  is  not  possible, 
its  laws  cannot  be  established,  its  methods  cannot  be  prac- 
tised, except  on  one  condition  ;  this  is,  that  the  psychology 
of  the  child  be  written,  and  well  written,  and  that  reflection 
draw  from  this  psychology  all  the  consequences  which  it 
permits. 

[667.  COMMENT  ox  MR.  SPENCER'S  EDUCATION. — Mon- 
sieur Compayre"  might  have  emphasized  his  cautions.  Read 
with  caution,  and  with  a  purpose  to  weigli  the  truth,  Mr. 
Spencer's  Education  is  inspiring  and  wholesome  ;  but  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  there  has  been  written,  since  the  Emile, 
a  book  on  education  which  is  so  well  fitted  to  deceive 
an  unwary  reader  by  its  rhetoric  and  philosophic  plausi- 
bility. The  air  of  breadth  and  candor  with  which  the  writer 
sets  out  is  eminently  prepossessing,  and  the  reader  is  almost 
obliged  to  assume  that  he  is  being  led  to  foregone  conclu- 
sions. The  first  chapter,  in  particular,  is  a  piece  of  literary 
art,  in  which  there  is  such  a  deft  handling  of  sentiment  and 
pathos  as  to  unfit  the  susceptible  reader  for  exercising  his 
own  critical  judgment. 

In  this  place  I  can  only  indicate  in  the  briefest  manner 
what  seem  to  be  the  fundamental  errors  contained  in  the 
book :  — 


THE   SCIENCE  OF   EDUCATION.  569 

1.  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  distinguish  between  the  immedi- 
ate and  the  mediate  practical  value  of  knowledges.     We  may 
admit  with  him  that  science  is  of  inestimable  value  to  the 
human  race  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  by  any  means  that  every 
person  must  be  versed  in  science.     As  we  need  not  own 
everything  that  is  essential  to  our  comfort,  so  we  need  not 
have  as  a  personal  possession  all   the   knowledge   that  we 
need  for  guidance. 

2.  ylt  is  a  very  low  conception  of  education  that  would 
limit  its  function  to  adapting  a  man  merely  to  that  state  in 
life  into  which  he  chances  to  be  born.     The  Bushman,  the 
Red   Indian,  and  the  accountant,  are  unfortunate    illustra- 
tions of  the  province  of  education.     Often  the  highest  func- 
tion  of  education  is  to  lift  a  man  out  of  his  ancestral  state.)  . 

3.  That  the  value  of  a  subject  for  guidance  is  the  same 
as  its  value  for  discipline,  is  true  under  only  one  assump- 
tion,—  that  the  Bushman  is  always  to  remain  a  Bushman, 
and  the  Red  Indian  always  a  Red  Indian,  as  by  the  new 
philosophy  of  course  they  should.     Practical  teachers  very 
well  know  that,  as  a  rule,  the  studies  that   are   the   most 
valuable  for  practical  use  are  the  least  valuable  for  disci- 
pline.    Mr.  Spencer  quotes  no  better  proof  of  his  assump- 
tion than  "  the  beautiful  economy  of  Nature." 

4.  nVIr.  Spencer's  proposed  education  is  sordid  in  its  utili- 
tarianism.j   He  is  preoccupied  with  man  as  an  instrument 
rather  than  with  a  human  being  aspiring  towards  the  highest 
type  of  his  kind.     A  liberal  education  should  be  preoccu- 
pied first  with  the  training  of  the  man,  then  with  the  train- 
ing of  the  instrument. 

5.  Mr.  Spencer's  restatement  of  Condillac's  and  Comte's 
doctrine,  that  individual  education  should  be  a  repetition  of 
civilization  in  petto,  is  at  best  but  a  specious  generalization. 
The  doctrine  cannot  be  applied  to  practice,  in  any  considera- 


570  THE   HISTOKY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 

ble  degree,  if  we  would,  and  should  not  be,  if  we  could,  for 
it  ignores  one  essential  factor  in  progress,  —  inheritance. 

6.  The  part  assigned  to  "  Nature"  in  the  work  of  educa- 
tion  is   so   overstrained   as   to   be   unnatural    and    absurd. 
Physical    science    has    long   since   discarded    this   myth   of 
Nature  personified.     It  is  only  in  educational  science  that 
this  fiction  is  still  employed  to  eke  out  an  argument. 

7.  The    doctrine   of    consequences   which    underlies   Mr. 
Spencer's  system  of  moral  education  is  applicable  to  but  a 
limited  number  of  cases,  or,  if  applied  with  thoroughness, 
is  inhuman.     Not  even  all  the  fit  would  survive  if  they  were 
not  shielded  from  the  consequences  of  their  acts  by  human 
sympathy  and  oversight.] 


APPENDIX. 

A. 

SUGGESTIOXS    TO    TEACHERS    OF   THE    HlSTORT    OF   PEDAGOGY. 

THE  two  aims  to  be  kept  in  view  in  the  teaching  of  this 
subject  are  culture,  and  guidance.  The  purpose  should  be  to 
extend  the  intellectual  horizon  of  the  teacher,  or,  to  use 
Plato's  phrase,  to  make  him  "  the  spectator  of  all  time  and 
all  existence " ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  to  furnish  the 
teacher  with  a  clew  which  will  safely  conduct  him  through 
the  mazes  of  systems,  methods,  and  doctrines.  There  is  no 
other  profession  that  has  derived  so  little  profit  from  capital- 
ized experiences  ;  and  there  is  no  profession  in  which  cul- 
ture and  breadth  are  more  necessary. 

For  securing  the  ends  here  proposed,  it  is  recommended 
that  a  plan  somewhat  like  the  following  be  pursued  in  the 
use  of  this  volume  :  — 

1.  If  there  are  three  recitations  a  week,  assign  one 
chapter  for  each  of  the  first  two  recitations,  to  be  carefully 
and  thoughtfully  read,  and  require  each  pupil  to  select  one 
special  topic  to  present  and  discuss  when  he  is  called  upon 
in  the  recitation  ;  and  for  the  third  recitation  in  each  week, 
require  each  pupil  to  select  a  topic  from  any  part  of  the 
book  which  has  thus  far  been  studied.  The  purpose  of  this 
plan  is  to  bring  before  the  class,  in  sharp  outline,  the  salient 
points  of  the  subject ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  create  a 
sense  of  the  organic  unity  of  the  theme  as  a  comprehensive 


572  APPENDIX. 

whole.  When  there  are  more  than  three  recitations  a  week, 
only  a  part  of  a  chapter  need  be  assigned  for  an  advance 
lesson. 

2.  When  the  first  survey  of  the  subject  has  been  made 
in   the  way  just  suggested,  a  review  may  be  conducted  as 
follows  :  — 

(1.)  Biographical.  Following  a  chronological  order,  di- 
vide the  whole  treatise  into  as  many  sections  as  there  are 
recitations  to  be  devoted  to  this  purpose,  and  require  each 
pupil  to  make  a  careful  study  of  some  educator,  as  Socrates, 
Montaigne,  or  Pestalozzi,  and  to  present  this  theme  when 
called  upon  in  recitation.  When  there  is  opportunity,  en- 
courage pupils  to  amplify  their  themes  with  information  de- 
rived from  other  sources. 

(2.)  Topical.  Require  each  pupil  to  select  some  doctrine, 
system,  or  method,  and  to  show,  in  a  systematic  way.  its 
origin,  progress,  and  termination.  In  this  review,  encourage 
the  critical  spirit,  and  make  the  recitation  to  consist,  in  part, 
of  a  free  discussion  of  principles  and  doctrines.  The  value 
of  this  subject  for  guidance  will  appear  in  this  part  of  the 
study. 

(3.)  By  Chapters.  Require  each  pupil  to  prepare  a  sum- 
mary of  some  chapter  in  the  book,  emphasizing  the  more 
important  truths  that  are  taught  in  it,  and  showing  the  ten- 
dency or  drift  of  educational  thought.  The  culture  value  of 
the  subject  will  appear  in  this  part  of  the  study.  By  this 
mode  of  treatment,  the  subject  can  be  compassed,  with  good 
results,  in  twenty  weeks. 

3.  Where  no  more  than  twelve  or  fourteen  weeks  can  l»e 
given  to  this  subject,  it  is  recommended  that  the  following 
chapters  be  selected:  I..  II.,  III.,  IV.,  V.,  VI.,  VII.,  X., 
XII.,  XIII.,  XVIII.,  XIX.,  XX.,  XXI.,  XXII. 

For  use  in  Teacher*'  Ma-ttngft  held  by  superintendents,  the 


APPENDIX.  573 

following  chapters  are  suggested:  II.,  III.,  V.,  VI.,  VII., 
X.,  XIII.,  XVIII.,  XX.,  XXII. 

For  use  iu   Teachers'  Reading  Circles,  either  of  the  above 
selections  will  serve  a  good  purpose. 


B. 

A  SELECT  LIST  OF  WORKS  SUPPLEMENTARY  TO  "  COMPAYRE'S 
HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY." 

1.  The  Cyclopaedia  of  Education.     New  York. 

2.  Buisson.     Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogie.     Parts  1-156.     Paris. 

8.  Lindner.     Handbuch  der  Erziehungskunde.     Wien  and  Leip- 
zig. 

4.  K.  Schmidt.     Die  Geschichte  der  Padagogik.     Cothen. 

5.  G.  Compayre.     Historic  Critique  des  Doctrines  de  I'Education 

en  France.     Paris. 

6.  Barnard.     German  Teachers  and  Educational  Reformers. 

7.  Barnard.     French  Teachers,  Schools,  and  Pedagogy. 

8.  Barnard.      English    Teachers,    Educators,  and   Promoters   of 

Education. 

0.  Barnard.     American  Teachers,  Educators,  and  Benefactors  of 
Education. 

10.  Barnard.     Pestalozzi  and  Swiss  Pedagogy. 

11.  Biber.     Pestalozzi  and  his  Plan  of  Education.     London. 

12.  Donaldson.     Lectures  on   the   History  of   Education.      Edin- 

burgh. 

13.  Kriisi.      Pestalozzi :    his    Life,    Work,    and     Influence.       Cin- 

cinnati. 

14.  Lorenz.     Life  of  Alcuin.     London. 

15.  Mrs.  Mann.     Life  of  Horace  Mann.     Boston. 
10.  Meiklejohn.     Dr.  Andrew  Bell.     London. 

17.  Morley,  J.     llousseau.     London. 

18.  Mullinger.     The  Schools  of  Charles  the  Great.     London. 

19.  Quick.     Essays  on  Educational  Reformers.     Cincinnati. 


574  APPENDIX. 

20.  Shuttleworth.     Fonr  Periods  of  Public  Education.     London. 

21.  Arnold.     Higher     Schools     and     Universities     of     Germany. 

London. 

22.  Hart.     German  Universities.     New  York. 

23.  De  Guimps.     Histoire  de  Pestalozzi.     Lausanne. 

24.  De  Guimps.      La  Philosophie  et  la  Pratique  de  I'Education. 

Paris. 

25.  Meunier.      Lutte  du  Principe  Clerical  et  de  Principe  Laique 

dans  1'Enseignement.     Paris. 

26.  Gaufres.     Claude  Baduel  et  la  Reforme  des  Eludes  au  XVIe 

Siecle.     Paris. 

27.  Bentham.     Chrestomathia.     London. 

28.  Drane.     Christian  Schools  and  Scholars.     London. 

29.  Ascham.     The  Scholemaster.    Notes  by  Mayor.     London. 

30.  Locke.     Thoughts  concerning  Education.     Notes  by  Quick. 

Cambridge. 

31 .  Laurie.     John  Amos  Comenius.     Boston. 

32.  Lancelot.     Narrative  of  a  Tour  to  La  Grande  Chartreuse. 

London. 

33.  Schimmelpenninck.   Narrative  of  the  Demolition  of  Port  Royal. 

London. 

34.  Hamilton,  Elizabeth.     Letters  on  the  Elementary  Principles 

of  Education.     London. 

35.  Spencer.  Education  :  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical.     N.  Y. 

36.  Rousseau,  iStnile.     Extracts.     Boston. 

37.  Blackie.     Four  Phases  of  Morals.     N.  Y. 

38.  Aristotle.     The  Politics  and  Economics.     London. 

39.  Craik.     The  State  in  its  Relation  to  Education.     London. 

40.  Cousin.     Report  on  the  State  of  Public  Instruction  in  Prussia. 

41.  Gill.     Systems  of  Education.     Boston. 

42.  Souquet.     Les  Ecrivains  Pedagogues  du  XVIe  Siecle.     Paris. 

43.  Maun.     Lectures  on  Education.     Boston. 

44.  Quintiliau.     Institutes  of  Oratory.     London. 

45.  Plato.     The  Republic  and  the  Laws.     London. 

46.  Xenophon.     The  Memorabilia  of  Socrates.     N.  Y. 

47.  Plutarch.     Morals.     Boston. 

48.  MacAlister.     Montaigne  on  Education.     Boston. 


APPENDIX.  575 

49.  Pestalozzi.     Leonard  and  Gertrude.     Boston. 

50.  Necker  de  Saussure.     Education  Progressive.     Paris. 

51.  Cochin.      Pestalozzi:    sa    Vie,    ses    OEuvres,    ses    Methodes. 

Paris. 

52.  Compayre.     Cours  de  Pedagogic.     Paris. 

53.  Milton.     Tractate  on  Education.     Cambridge. 

54.  Fenelon.     Fables.     Paris. 

55.  Fenelon.     The  Education  of  a  Daughter.     Dublin. 

56.  Martin.     Les  Doctrines  Pedagogiques  des  Grecs.     Paris. 

57.  Jacotot.     Enseignement  Universel.     Paris. 

58.  Adams.     The   Free    School    System   of    the    United   States. 

London. 

59.  Conrad.     The  German  Universities  for  the  last  Fifty  Years. 

Glasgow. 

60.  Capes.     University  Life  in  Ancient  Athens.     N.  Y. 

61.  Mahaffy.     Old  Greek  Education. 

62.  Chassiotis.     L'Instruction  Publique  chez  les  Grecs.     Paris. 
(53.  Spiers.     School  System  of  the  Talmud.     London. 

64.  Simon.     L 'Education    et   1'Instruction    des    Enfants  chez  les 

Anciens  Juifs.     Paris. 

65.  Edgeworth.     Practical  Education.     N".  Y. 

NOTE.  —  For  other  supplementary  works,  and  for  a  more  com- 
plete description  of  the  books  in  the  above  list,  consult  the  Bibliog- 
raphy of  G.  Stanley  Hall  (Boston  :  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.). 


INDEX. 


Abelard,  75. 

Academy,  22;  French,  219, 301, 386. 

Achilles,  46. 

Activity,  57,  72,  92,  93,  171,  191, 

207,  401,  470;  categories  of,  542  ; 

the  divine,  454  ;  industrial,  544. 
Adalberic,  08. 
Adaptation,  27,  31,  79,  90,  92,  158, 

200,  294,  323,  329,  354,  461,  530, 

553. 
Adele  and  Theodore,  of  Madame  de 

Genlis,  480. 
Age,  for  public  instruction,  11,  14, 

15,  19,  31,  32,  34,  38,  49,  50,  55, 

287,  323,  347,  348. 
Agricola,  Rudolph,  87. 
.Agriculture,  420. 
Ahriman,  14. 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  Council  of,  73. 
Alcuin,  72. 

Alexander.  11,  36,  294. 
Alexander,  118. 
Alfred  the  Great,  73. 
All  is  in  Ail,  527. 
Amusements,  33,  94,  96,  98,  118, 

119,  146,  161,  248,  294,  306,  348 

458,  460. 
Amyot,  53,  54. 
Analysis,  22, 23,  32,  42,  96,  188,  284, 

314,  558. 

Anselm,  Saint,  76,  77,  119. 
Antiquity,  education  in,  1-16,  18, 

37,  320. 
Arabic,  102. 
Arabs,  77. 


Arbogast,  393,  394, 

Argovia,  418,  438. 

Argument,  19,  52,  74,  80,  145. 

Aristophanes,  20,  87. 

Aristotle,  10,  11,  22,  42,  46,  52,  59, 
66,  74,  321 ;  plan  of  education, 
36-41 ;  of  music,  20,  39. 

Arithmetic,  76, 80,  98, 114, 129,  205, 
263,  269,  441 ;  moral,  471. 

Arnauld,154;  General  Grammar,\*>5. 

Art,  30,  31,  60,  116,  179,  309,  310, 
327,  546 ;  of  education,  22,  39,  60, 
85,  91,  122,  310,  476 ;  industrial, 
331,  351,  384,  528,  545;  of  creat- 
ing thought,  23,  91,  156,  157,  315, 
316,  471. 

Artisans,  15,  28,  40,  98,  118,  134, 
135,  209,  300,  565. 

Arts,  Faculty  of,  233,  234,  321,  341, 
512;  the  Seven  Liberal,  75,  119. 

Asceticism,  4,  63,  65,  66,  160,  161, 
259,  260. 

Assembly,  Constituent,  371,  372, 
390,  395;  Legislative,  371,  373, 
390;  National,  369,  391. 

Assistant,  10,  131,  267,  327,  424. 

Astronomy,  6, 11,  32,  71,  74,  76,  98, 
129,  157,  205. 

Athens,  education  at,  17,  40,  43. 

Atlantic   Mo»//i!,/,  310. 

d'Aubigne',  53. 

Augustine,  Saint,  47,  64,  68,  71, 
219,  225. 

Augustus,  46,  47. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  53,  58. 


578 


THE    HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Austria,  465, 

Authority,  15,  74,  81,  110,  122, 136, 

172,  191,  264,  309,  518,  528,  532; 

basis  of,  13,  32,  74,  149,  161. 
Auxerre,  342. 
Avignon,  139,  263. 

Bacon,  32,  123,  124,  133,  136,  192, 

211. 
Bain,  124, 194, 538,  556-563 ;  errors 

of,  559-563. 
Barraud,  434. 
Barrere,  397. 
Barriere,  485. 
Bascdow,  414. 
Basil,  Saint,  64. 
Bausset,  Cardinal  de,  178. 
Bauzen,  537. 

Beauty,  30,  31,  84,  98,  546. 
Beauvilliers,  165,  166. 
Beckx,  142,  145. 
Belief,  74..  143,  101,  304,  381. 
Bell,  Andrew,  6,  513-517. 
Belles-lf  tires,  113,  160, 152,  236,  321, 

322,  324,  404. 
Benedict,  Saint,  69. 
Benedictines,  68,  76,  279. 
Bontham,    Cltrestomalhia,  100,  519, 

562. 

Berlin,  451,  464. 
Bernardin  de  Saint  Pierre,  394. 
Bersot,  149,  534. 
Bert,  Paul,  395. 
Berthollet,  405. 

Burgdorf,  419,  426,  433,  456,  457. 
Be'rulle,  150. 
Bias,  32. 
Bible,  7,  65,  81,  86,  99,  113,  120, 

248,  304,  324,  342,  420. 
Billom,  College  of,  141. 
Bills,   Educational,   390-411,   609- 

612,  519-525. 


Birr,  438. 

Blackie,  Four  Phases  of  Morals,  21, 
Blankenburg,  457,  463. 
Boarding-schools,  282, 327,  3D7, 4:]:3, 

485. 
Body,  28,  29, 33, 38, 65,  94, 196-199, 

292-315 ;  exercises  for,  18, 19, 28. 

94,  135,  289-292. 
Boeotia,  53. 
Bohemia,  125. 
Boileau,  182,  219,  243. 
Bonneval,  283. 

Book  for  Mothers,  Pestalozzi's,  431. 
Books,  70,  86,  105,  132,  24n.  •_".  s. 

369,  393,  528;  use  of,  10(5.  107, 

218,  298,  352,  429,  441,  516,  564. 
Bossuet,  141,  182-185,  243. 
Boufflers,  Marquis  de,  148. 
Bouquier,  379,  391,  400;   Law  of, 

400,  401. 
Bourgogne,    306;    Duke    of,    166, 

177-182. 
Boys,  education  of,  6,  8,  34,  48,  54, 

94,  114,  284-302,  398. 
Boze,  de,  243. 
Brahmins,  4,  6. 
Bre'al,  Michel,  113,  343,  534. 
Bretagne,  344. 

Brethren  of  Saint  Charles,  255. 
Brethren  of  the  Christian  Schools, 

112,  138,  147,  253-277,  353,  365, 

513,  515. 

Brinon.  Madame  de,  228. 
Browning,  54. 
Brugg,  418,  438. 
Buddha,  4. 
Buisson,  Dictiannaire  de  Pedarjoyif, 

13,  130,  369. 

"  Bureau  of  Correspondence,"  358. 
Burnier,  163. 

Burnouf,  Hisloire  du  Bouddhinu,  5. 
Buss,  428. 


INDEX. 


579 


Cabanis,  369. 

Cabet,  527. 

Cabinet,  school,  385. 

Cabinet  of  du  Mas,  239. 

Cadet,  246. 

Caesar,  51,  106. 

Cjcsar  de  Bus,  139. 

Cajet,  Dom  Joseph,  280. 

Calvin,  113. 

Cambridge,  University  of,  77. 

Campan,  Madame,  485-487. 

Campe,  415. 

Campus  Martins,  44. 

Carnot,  501,  521,  524. 

Carre,  153. 

Carthage,  105. 

Caste,  2,  14,  15,  16,  28,  33,  42,  143, 

256,  564. 

Casuistry,  65,  67,  343. 
Catechism,  44,  81,  113,  272,  321, 

338,  364. 

Catherine  II.,  of  Russia,  320. 
Catholicism,  139,  253-277. 
Cavern,  Plato's,  32. 
Centralization,  358,  361,  386,  395, 

396,  512  ;  opposed,  372. 
Central  Schools,  407. 
Ceremonies,  12,   30,  36,  146,   199, 

287,  393. 
Chaillot,  504. 
Chaldee,  95. 
Chance,  328,  329. 
Channing,  59,  476,  563-565. 
Character,  490,  497. 
Charicles,  25. 
Charity,  37,  61,  281;    condemned, 

29,  153. 

Charlemagne,  71-73,  106. 
Charles  the  Bold,  68,  73. 
Charron,  Wisdom,  110. 
Chastanier,  263. 
Chateaubriand,  245,  511. 


hevalier  de  la  Tour-Landry,  79. 
Child,  38,  39,  46,  79,  169,  195,  196  ; 
age  for  study,  11,  39,  49,  287  ; 
development  of,  31,  S8,  50,  195, 
455,  456,  498;  education  of,  46, 
48,  80,  86,  103,  107,  122, 129,  153, 
169,  237,  240,  284-304,  318,  420, 
442,  501-504,  520-525  ;  etiquette, 
88,  89,  199,  270;  inclination  of, 
3,  33,  79,  159,  169,  207,  257,  291, 
333,  334,  346,  454,  460,  492,  547, 
549;  indulgence  of,  50,  172,  173, 
206,  551 ;  moral  protection  of, 
39,  49,  50,  78,  88,  173,  248,  470- 
475  ;  punishment  of,  6,  7,  12,  33, 
76,  77,  78,  102,  271-276,  551 ;  the 
property  of  the  State,  27, 397, 398. 

Chinese,  11-13;  civil  service  of,  16. 

Chriae,  51. 

Christian  Doctrine,  The  Order  of 
the,  139. 

Christianity,  8,  61,   116,   174,  228, 
248,  304. 

Christian  Marriage,  of  Erasmus,  90. 

Christians,  The  Early,  61-67. 

Chrysale,  212,  213. 

Chrysippus,  48,  51. 

Church,  The,  68,  69,  81,  139,  233, 
319,  330,  365,  371,  413. 

Cicero,  46,  47,  70,  95,  101. 

Ciceromania,  85. 

Circular  of  Guizot,  521. 

Citharist,  20. 

Civil  Government,  360,  374,  400, 489. 

Clarke,  196.  ; 

Classes,  267,  501. 

Cleanliness,  65,  90,  93,  94. 

Clergy,  103,  164. 

Clermont,  141. 

Cloister,  66,  69,  217,  346. 

Co-education,   128,  231,  256,  369, 
378,  398. 


580 


THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 


Colleges,  85, 141,  233,  234, 237,  249, 
321,  382,  512. 

Colloquy  of  the  Abb?,  of  Erasmus, 
90. 

Comedy,  30,  39. 

Comenius,  106,  112,  118,  121-130, 
155,  282,  415,,  457. 

Communication,  13,  53,  106 ;  lack 
of,  70,  161,  217,  266;  of  knowl- 
edge, 41,  53,  71,  113,  131,  147, 
665. 

Compayre',  190,  194,  203,  309,  336, 
389,  568. 

Compulsion,  120,  136, 182, 255,  263, 
321,  370,  387,  397,  398,  400,  523, 
533. 

Comte,  322,  323,  529-531. 

Conde,  141, 

Condillac,  124,  194,  312-319,  346, 
403,  534;  Grammaire,  124. 

Condorcet,  282,  323,  379-389,  392, 
397,  407. 

Conduct  of  Schools,  La  Salle's, 
262-276. 

Confucius,  12. 

Conjugal  Precepts,  Plutarch's,  55. 

Conscience,  24,  57,  58,  61,  105,  163, 
200,  201,  303,  33(3,  424,  522,  543. 

Considerant,  Victor,  528. 

Constituent  Assembly,372, 390,395. 

Construction,  459,  461,  499. 

Convention,  The,  390-411. 

Convents,  62-70,  214-218,  378,  485. 

Conversation,  106,  205,  S99 ;  with 
Aristodemus,  26 ;  Art  of,  22, 106, 
107 ;  of  Buddha  and  Puma,  4,  6. 

Conversations,  of  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon,  222-229. 

Cordova,  77. 

Coriolanus,  45. 

Corneille,  141,  213. 

Cornelia,  45. 


Corporal  punishment,  6,  7,  8,  12, 
33,  51,  76,  77,  78,  102,  147,  148, 
152,  160,  202,  203,  251,  271-276, 
330,  551. 

Coste,  P.,  196. 

Cotton,  Montaigne,  102. 

Council  of  Carthage,  64. 

Council  of  public  instruction,  359, 
309,  392,  306. 

Councils-General,  392,  509. 

Counsels  to  her  Daughter,  of  Madame 
de  Lambert,  176. 

Courage,  15, 18,  36,  294,  522. 

Cournot,  534. 

Course  o/">SWy,Condillac'6,214-219. 

Courses  for  adults,  383,  384. 

Courses  of  study,  321,  326,  348,365, 
377,  383,  398,  402,  472,  486, 
620-525,  559. 

Courtalon,  404. 

Cousin,  156,  523,  533. 

Coustel,  Education  of  Children,  154. 

Critias,  25. 

Crousaz,  282. 

Culture,  8,  31,  41,  47,  55,  60,69,  111, 
158,  325,  388, 543, 565 ;  Athenian, 
18,  30,  31, 43 ;  Chinese,  13 ;  Egyp- 
tian, 14  ;  of  the  imagination,  4'.M>, 
500;  of  the  Middle  Age,  69;  self, 
57,  59,  87,  301,  383,  421, 439,  476, 
504,  549,  564;  studies,  40,  60, 
157,  324-326,  335,  339. 

Curiosity,  106,  130,  170,  184,  247, 
347,  503. 

Ci/ropsedia,  Xenophon's,  14,  34,  35, 
'36. 

Czech,  125,  126. 

Dacier,  Madame,  213. 
D'Alembert,  278,  319,  331. 
Dancing,  118, 161, 181, 214, 306, 396. 
Darin,  427. 


INDEX. 


581 


Daubenton,  405. 

Daunou,  386,  391,  395,  410,  411. 

Dauphin,  The,  182-185. 

David,  GO. 

Decazes,  515. 

Deism,  C9,  304,  305,  454,  476. 

De  Lasteyrie,  516. 

Demia,  254-258. 

Demogeot,  203, 

Demosthenes,  114. 

De  Ratione  Studil,  of  Erasmus,  88. 

De  Sacy,  154. 

Descartes,  141,  152,  157,  187-192, 

213,  234. 
Dcschamps,  515. 
Dessau,  415. 
Destiny,  of  man,  62,  109,  135,  136, 

163,  188,  239,  454,  492,  539,  542, 

567  ;  of  woman,  500. 
De  Tocquevillc,  491. 
Development,  13,  23,  31,  38,  49,  91, 

93,  111,  129,  158,  208,  288,  313, 

381,  412,  421,  423,  436,  439,  455, 

476,  495,  503,  542;    precocious, 
.  50,  240. 
Deventer,  86. 
Devotion,  214-217,  228,  269,  305, 

318,  442. 

Dialectics,  32, 42, 45,  52,  75,  70, 118. 
Dialogue,  22,  24. 
Dialogues   of  the   Dead,  Fenelon's, 

166,  179.' 
Dictionnaire    de  Pe'darjoyie,  11,   13, 

130,  369,  371,  391,  464. 
Didactica  Maijna,  124,  126. 
Didactics,  22,  50,  53,  66,  78,  97,  121, 

206. 

Diderot,  121,  278,  319-327,  344. 
Diesterweg,  422,  464,  465. 
Dignity,  of   mother.  291,  384;    of 

persons,  18,  35,  57,  62,  78,  162, 

201,  207,  273,  304,  338. 


Diogenes,  292. 

Diogenes  Laertius,  37. 

Discipline,  6,  7,  11,  20,  33,  36,  38, 
41,  44,  50,  51,  76,  77,  81,  88,  101, 
102,  111,  119,  145-148,  159-162, 
180,  199,  203,  238,  249-252, 
263-266,  270-276,  336,  366,  416, 
551 ;  of  consequences,  336,  551. 

Discourse  on  Method,  of  Descartes, 
188. 

Discovery,  124,  157,  435,  549. 

Dittes,  Ilistoire  de  I'e'ducation,  3,  6, 
13,  114,  413,  416,  526,  537. 

Division  of  labor,  131,  152,  266, 
354,  569. 

Doctors,  of  the  Church,  63,  67,  68, 
74,  75. 

Doctrinaries,  The,  139,  395. 

Domitian,  47,  53. 

Donatus,  118. 

Dordogne,  400,  434. 

Drama,  219,  223,  242,  316,  378. 

Drane,  Augusta  F.,  Christian  Schools 
and  Scholars,  72. 

Drawing,  39,  130,  204,  326. 

Dressier,  537. 

Dualism,  14  ;  Socratic,  23,  24. 

Dubois,  356. 

Duclos,  345. 

Dumarsais,  331. 

Dumonstier,  404. 

Dupanloup,  505,  531,  532. 

Dupont  de  Nemours,  493. 

Duruy,  362,  366,  409,  502,  522,  523. 

Dussault,  431. 

Duty,  200,  333,  337,  338,  490,  493 ; 
of  teacher,  50,  199,  257,  291. 

Economics,  34,  55. 

Economy,   36,  398;   in   education, 
516 ;  of  nature,  3, 31, 286, 290, 553. 
Ecouen,  485. 


582 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Edgworth,  Miss,  482. 

Education,  30-33,  41,  42,  48,  80, 
565 ;  in  antiquity,  1-1G ;  Atheni- 
an, 18,  28,  43;  by  the  Church, 
G3,  09,  81,  143,  233,  277  ;  defini- 
tion of,  33,  37,  103,  540;  domes- 
tic, 7,  8,  35,  48,  54,  55,  127,  227, 
378,  422,  485,  498 ;  extent  of,  31, 
34,  51,  100,  104,  128,  158,  184, 
185, 503, 567 ;  formal,  12, 145-147, 
347;  among  the  Greeks,  17^12; 
higher,  6,  28,  31,  55,  75,  80,  113, 
128, 233, 512  ;  intellectual,  29, 31, 
39, 41,  110, 156, 157, 203, 468-475, 
496,  548;  moral,  39,  41,  48,  59, 
99, 130,159-162, 177-182,199-203, 
245-252,  280,  380,  381,  465,  550, 
567 ;  national,  340-389,  523,  530, 
536,  504-568 ;  negative,  287-310, 
334,  348,  497,  542-555 ;  the  new, 
93,  123,  192,  208,  210,  284-310, 
343,  347,  456,  460,  542;  obliga- 
tory, 8,  13,  16,  42,  115,  120,  136, 
182,  255,  263,  321,  370,  371,  387, 
400,  409,  411,  523;  the  old,  92, 
144,  192,  283,  334,  460,  547; 
physical,  19,  29,  38,  41, 43,  70,  93, 
119,  135,  196-199,  283,  496,  554, 
555;  power  of,  6,  80,  163,  181, 
186,  328,  329,  333,  544,  565  ;  pub- 
lic, 8,  13,  27,  37,  49, 113-136, 182, 
209,250,279,  484,  565;  purpose 
of,  98,  104,  136,  158,  181,  238, 
316,  318,  346,  347,  383,  454,  483, 
496,  531,  536,  564,  567 ;  Roman, 
4:5-60 ;  science  of,  22,  48,  53,  59, 
535-571;  scientific,  28,  32,  40, 
91,  151,  157,  535-555;  self,  57, 
59,  87,  299,  383,  421,  439, 476, 504, 
549,  564  ;  Spartan,  18,  34,  37,  43; 
systematic,  2,  38,  41,  91, 128, 288, 
525,  531,  547;  treatises  on,  9,14, 


27,  33,  34,  35,  37,  40,  47,  54,  5',, 
56,  58, 64, 80, 88,  92, 100, 103, 110, 
126,  154,  166,  195,  223,  235,  319, 
421,  422,  431,  438,  480,  501-503 ; 
universal,  8,  13,  16,  62,  100,  115, 
118,  129,  136,  297,  374,  411,  468, 
480,  481,  510,  520-531,  534,  565  ; 
a  universal  right,  16,  33,  37,  55, 
158, 325, 356, 484, 530 ;  of  women, 
34,  55,  109,  110,  115,  116,  128, 

168,  174-176,  212-231,  241,  282, 
305,  307,  378,  385,  478-507. 

Education,   Spencer's,  3,  ICO,  124, 

507,  534,  538-555. 
Education  as  a  Science,  Ba'n's,  124, 

194,  556-563. 
Education  of  Girls,  Fenelon's,  165— 

169,  174-177,  184,  212,  229. 
Education   of  Man,  Frcebel's,  453— 

456. 

Education  of  a  Prince,  Nicole's,  154. 
Education  of  Women,  of  Madame  de 

Remusat,  487-490. 
Egypt,  14. 

Elocution,  21,  51,  52,  107. 
£mile,  The,  27,  98,  126,  210,  235, 

278-310. 
Emotions,  42,  66,  206,207,285,  303, 

550,  551. 

Emulation,  67,  146,  162,  183,  299. 
Encyclopedic,  The,  319. 
Encyclopedists,  337,  480. 
England,  72,  564. 
Entretiens  sur  les  Sciences,  Lamy's, 

150,  151. 
Environment,  3,  39,  58,  70, 194, 258, 

310,  339. 

Epicureans,  52,  108,  141. 
Equality,  61, 190,  328, 374,  380,400, 

565 ;  of  sex,  241, 256, 384, 479, 506. 
Erasmus,  85-91,  94 ;  works  of,  86, 

385. 


INDEX. 


583 


Espionage,  147,  258,  276. 
Esther,  219,  242. 
Estouteville,  Cardinal  d',  232. 
Ethics,  24,  37,  39,  42,  50,  57,  70, 

200,  247,  270,  292,  322,  320,  351, 
470,  477,  491,  539. 

Ethnology,  2. 

Etiquette,  88,  94,  101, 199, 227, 270 ; 

of  ladies,  90,  227. 
Eudemon  of  Rabelais,  92-100. 
Euthydemus,  The,  24.     . 
Evil,  14,  31,  05,  60,  159,  109;  cause 

of,  4,  14,  159,  217,  287,  333,  381, 

492 ;  how  overcome,  50,  66,  100, 

217,  333,  381,  505. 
Evolution,  530. 
Examinations,  10 ;  of  teachers,  255, 

201,  321,  358,  307,  432,  513. 
Example,  53. 

Exclusiveness,  12,  14,  40,  54,  70, 

143,  217,  224,  352,  540. 
Excursions,  97,  98,  348,  450. 
Existence  of  God,  Fenelon's,  160. 
Experience,  10,  32,  53,  92,  93,  97, 

106,  136,  485. 

Explanation,  11,  133,  156,  299. 
Expulsion,  271. 


Fables,  190,  240,  244,  295,  315,  335, 

348,  494. 
Fables,   Fe'nelon's,    166,   173,    177- 

180,  186. 
Faculties,  The,  233,  321,  383,  511- 

513. 

Faire  faire,  497. 
Faith,  74,  113,  143,  304,  381. 
Family,  7,  12,  35,  36,  37,  45,  54,  60, 

128,  129,  291,  378,  509,  534,  542, 

545 ;  sacrificed,  27,  146,  224,  397, 

398,  399. 

Farrar,  Archdeacon,  14. 
Fathers,  The  early,  63,  67,  68. 


Fathers,  90,  103,  108,  109,  345,  424, 

545. 
Faults,  in  education,  40,  46,  67,  68, 

69,  74,  92,  108,  109,  110,  133,143, 

145,  149,  101,  107,  108,  171,  181, 

189,  201,  226,  270-276,  292,  302- 

307,  322,  329,  341,  342,  432,  437, 

462,  463,  470,  518,  534,  552,  568 ; 

of  Greek  pedagogy,  40;  of  women, 

488,  489. 
Fear,  200,  201. 

Feelings,  33,  180,  275,  295,300,444. 
Felbiger,  410. 
Fellenberg,   Agricultural   Institutes, 

422. 

Fencing,  70,  98,  114. 
Fe'nelon,  78,  164-186,  198,  212,214, 

229,  241,  282,  403,  486. 
Ferrier,  Greek  Philosophy,  21. 
Ferule,  102,  272. 
Fichte,  422,  443;   Discourse  to  the 

German  Nation,  536. 
Firmness,  33,  101,  274. 
Fischer,  439. 
Fitch,  336. 
Fle'chier,  141. 
Fleury,  The  Abbe',  74,  75,  154,  100, 

214,  240. 

Fontaine,  Madame  de,  220. 
Fontanes,  511. 
Form,  430. 
Formalism,  12,  36,  74,  91,  145,  211, 

263,  342,  445. 
Fortoul,  501. 
Fourcroy,  478,  510. 
Fourier,  527,  529. 
Fournier,  459. 

France,  72,218-224;  College  of,  85. 
Francke,  414. 
Fnmkfort,  448. 
Freedom,  40,  61, 101,  166,  310,  565; 

annihilated,  3,  4,  74,  92,  403 ;  of 


584 


THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 


intelligence,  72,  77,  91,  191,  394, 

564. 
French,  102,  154,  234,242,342,357, 

392. 
French  Revolution,  The,  71,  308, 

360,  362-389,  522. 
Friburg,  465,  467. 
Froebel,  446-465,  501. 
Fronto,  58. 
Frugality,  14,  15,  36,  65, 169,  197, 

199,  229,  258,  418,  452. 
Fulneck,  125. 
Fustel  de  Coulanges,  61. 

Gall,  538. 

Gamala,  Joshua  Ben,  9. 

Gamaliel,  11. 

Gargantua  of  Rabelais,  91-100. 

Gamier,  500. 

Garot,  240. 

Gaudentius,  Letter  to,  64. 

Gaultier,  The  Abbe',  514,  516. 

Genesis,  of  knowledge,  313,  558. 

Geneva,  College  of,  113. 

Genlis,  Madame  de,  176,  479-482. 

Geography,  24,  80,  129,  151,   150, 

183,  205,  240,  297,  322,  342,  349, 

400,  403,  436,  481 ;  moral,  472. 
Geometry,  11,  31,  47,  51,  76,  80,  98, 

129,  205,  436. 
Gerando,  520. 
German,  351. 
Germany,  114,  279,  283,  413,  524, 

526. 
Germany    of     Madame    de    Stael, 

495.  ' 

Gerson,  77,  78. 
Gessner,  427. 
"  Gifts  "  of  Frcebel,  452,  458,  459, 

476. 
Girard,The  Pere,  431, 437, 446,465- 

475. 


Girls,  destiny  of,  500;  education 
of,  5,  8,  11,  35,  64,  65,  66,  79,  80, 
90,  109,  110,  117,  128,  168,  174, 


175,  212-231,  237,  241,  305,  300, 
307,  384,  398,  399,  478-507. 

Girondists,  391. 

God,  61,  63,  99,  174,  182,  286,  288, 
454,  522;  belief  in,  20',  27,  17-5, 
304,  337;  duty  to,  30,  GO,  149, 

182,  216,  217,  220,  270,  304,  .">12  ; 
knowledge   of,   315,  337;   omni- 
presence of,  3,  192,  454. 

Goethe,  538. 

Goldammer,  459. 

Golden  rule,  example  of,  5,  78. 

Gonzagas,  Prince  of,  79. 

Good,  The,  30,  31,  286. 

Goodwin,  Plutarch's  Morals,  54. 

Gwgias,  The,  24. 

Gossot,  504. 

Gournay,  Mademoiselle,  110. 

Government,  238,  264,  270-276. 

Gracchus,  45. 

Grades,  127,  128,  137, 224,  233, 234, 

267,  288,  323,  348,  376,  382,  393, 

496,  548,  559. 
Grammar,  19,  20,  24,  39,  47,  51,  71, 

90,  130,  133,  144,  154.  155,  171, 

183,  243,  316,  323,  470-475. 
Grammarian,  20,  51,  103,  470. 
Gratuity,  120,  254,  262,  321,  367, 

370,  372,  376,  386,  388,  398,  522, 

523,  533,  566. 
Gray  Friars,  466. 
Gre'ard,  216,  223,  287,288,  306,  354, 

457,  461,  480,  505,  515,  516,  518, 

553,  562. 
Greek,  the  stndy  of,  48,  71,  86,  95, 

102,  105,  121/143,  144,  183,  189, 

205,  237,  244,  ^7.  2^3,  317,  821, 

324-326,  351,  352,  481,  512,  547, 

559. 


INDEX. 


585 


Greek  pedagogy,  11,  17-42. 

Gregory  the  Great,  Saint,  68. 

Griesheiin,  452. 

Grignan,  Madame  de,  214. 

Grimm,  344. 

Groot,  Gerard,  86. 

Grosselin,  135. 

Grote,  History  of  Greece,  21. 

Gruner,  448. 

Guienne,  College  of,  101,  102. 

Guidance,  as  object  of  instruction, 
16,  49,  57,  201,  291,  293,  318. 

Guillaume,  391. 

Guizot,  490,  512, 519-522;  Madame, 
490-494. 

Guyon,  Madame,  174. 

Guyot,  154. 

Guyton  de  Morveau,  343. 

Gymnasium,  128,  145;  Greek,  19. 

Gymnastics,  19,  28,  29,  39,  44,  79, 
94,  135,  195-199,  292,  433 ;  intel- 
lectual, 324,  326 ;  interdicted,  66. 

Habits,  293,  315,  334. 

Halle,  414. 

Halle  aux  Draps,  mutual  school,  517. 

Hamilton,  194,  404. 

Hamilton,  Miss,  482-484. 

Hannibal,  105. 

Happiness,  3,  294,  328. 

"  Hardening  process,"  196-198,291, 

20-2,  452. 
Harmony,  20,  29,  31,  39,  41,  52,  79, 

110,  451. 
Hartley,  483. 
Harvard  College,  125. 
Health,  29,  39,  65,  79,  94,  169,  222, 

542. 
Heart,  12,  56.  66,  110,  303,  443,  469, 

471-475,  498. 
Hebrew,  95,  99,  118,  121. 
Hebrews,  7-11. 


Hecker,  414. 

Hegel,  447. 

Heidelberg,  University  of,  77. 

Helvetius,  196,  319,  327-330,  344. 

Henry  IV.,  of  France,  53,  147,  232, 

233. 

Herbart,  194,  537. 
Herbault,  514. 
Herder,  538. 
Heredity,  313. 
Herodotus,   32. 
Hersan,  235. 
Hindoos,  2-4. 
History,  12,  32,  33,  36,  47,  53,  76, 

80, 91, 105, 116,  118, 129, 144, 145, 

151,  173,  175,  179,  190,  206;  of 

education,  85,  126. 
Holidays,  393. 

Holiness,  63,  68, 100,  214-217,  228. 
Holland,  86,  282,  283. 
Holland,       Philemon,       Plutarch's 

Morals,  54. 

Homer,  20,  64,  320,  324. 
Honor,  196,  199,  200,  302. 
Horace,  45,  69,  87,  324. 
How  Gertrude  teaches  her  Children, 

Pestalozzi's,  427. 
Hue,  13. 
Humanist,  91,  100,   163,  195,  213, 

324. 
Humanities,  The,  73,  80,  91,  144, 

151,  324,  325,  326,  351,  558-561. 
Humanities,  Arnauld's,  154. 
Human  Understanding,  Locke's,  196. 
Hume,  194. 
Hygiene,  39,  79,  84,  94,  197,  292, 

544. 

Ideal,  66,  104,  151,  279;  Chinese, 
12, 13 ;  of  the  Fathers,  66 ;  Greek, 
41 ;  Hebrew,  7  ;  Hindoo,  3-5 ; 
Koman,  44,  57;  Persian,  14,  15. 


586 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Idealists,  193,  363. 

Ideas,  315,  381 ;  birth  of,  23,  325, 

326,  381,  439,  471,  503;  grammar 

of,  471;   innate,  439;    religious, 

3,  42,  62 ;  made  significant,  107, 

133,  157,  293. 
Identity,  loss  of,  3. 
Ignorance,  13,  18,  29, 68, 70,  72, 116, 

143,  225,  226,  300,  364,  369,  519; 

learned,   92,  104,  107,  117,  189; 

Socratic,  22,  24. 
Imagination,  42,  97,   98,  133,  135, 

174,  176,  191,  285,  347,  403,  499, 

500. 

Imitation,  12, 49, 50, 84, 144,462, 467. 
Imitation,  Gerson's,  77,  78. 
Immobility,  Hi,  18,  145,  342. 
Impressions,  208,  295,  328,  334,  461, 

484,  492,  503. 

India,  education  in,  6,  514. 
Individuality,  3,  15,  37,  57,  84,  85, 

123,  136,  158,  207,  310,  313,  338, 

381,  439,  452,  461,  489,  549;  loss 

of,  4,  27,  29,  57,  63,  98,  145,  146, 

274,  346. 
Induction,  26,  27,  36,  96,  107,  121, 

123,  133,  157,  295,  313,  548. 
Indulgence,  50 ;    of   teachers,  90, 

146. 
Inertness,  intellectual,  2,  29,  44, 68, 

70,  92,  144,  228,  329,  518. 
Instinct,  24,  31,  93,  133,  290,  460, 

529,  536. 
Institute  of  the  Brethren,  112,  138, 

153-163,  252-277. 
Institutes,  382. 

Institutes  of  Oratory,  48,  60,  89. 
Instruction,  13,  39,  46,  79,  199,  280, 

379 ;  Christian,  62, 269 ;  domestic, 

7,  27,  45,  46,  55,  127,  120.  2:27, 

378,  384,  485;  ecclesiastical,  63, 

69,  81,  139,  167,  218,  233,  345; 


gratuitous,  69,  73,  78,  12 
262,  263,  321,  367,  370,  376,  380, 
398,  409,  523,  506 ;  indirect,  170, 
177-182,  184,  185,  223,  287-310, 
481 ;  mutual,  6,  53, 131,  267,  392, 
424,  513-519,  534  ;  national,  340- 
389,  523,  565;  need  of,  70,  71, 
115,  116,  320,  356,  309,  523,  566 ; 
popular,  8, 130,  415,  438, 480, 487, 
522  ;  primary,  13,  20,  40,  55,  81, 
86,  112-136,  139,  142,  153,  177, 
209,  239,  240,  250-277,  321,  353, 
356,300,304,384,417,4:;:; 
465,  468-475,  500,  524,  525;  pub- 
lic, 8,  9, 11,  20,  27,  38,  46,  4'.'.  78, 
78,  114,  128,  182,  209,  321,  300, 
522-525;  religious,  98,  111,  113, 
115,  118,  257,  303,  336,  346,  380, 
438,  452,  466, 554  ;  secondary.  Mi, 
113,  128, 139,  143,  205.  2:33,  282; 
self,  57,  87,  136,  156,  318,  383, 
421, 439, 476,  504.  :,  M»,  .',04  ;  sense, 
193,  283,  403;  simultaneous.  :>1, 
152,  240,  266,  277,  424, 515 ;  tech- 
nical, 193,  206, 203,  2*1,  331,  370, 
384,  408,  414,  419,  545. 

Intelligence,  38,  58,  71,  72,  80,  93, 
101,  191,  192,  296,  310,  320,  354, 
370,  436,  440,  455,  498 ;  disregard 
for,  44,  68,  70,  92,  143,  171,  4n3  ; 
works  of,  26,  27,  109,  156,  157, 
394,  564. 

Interpretation,  15,  158,  293. 

Intuition,  129,  132,  133,  290-310, 
403,  415,  423,  428,  438,  449,  4-32, 
548-555. 

Irony.  Socratic,  23. 

Israelites,  6-11. 

Italy,  84,  475. 

Jacotot,  190,  526,  527. 
Janet,  403. 


INDEX. 


587 


Jansenists,  110,  153-163,  234. 
Janua  linguarum  reserata,  of  Come- 

nius,  126,  127,  134. 
Jealousy,  12,  25,  153,  259. 
Jena,  Prussians  at,  8. 
Jerome,  Saint,  64,  71. 
Jeromites,  86. 
Jesuits,  85,  139-150,  189,  232,  234, 

258,  279,   340-344,  468;   of  the 

East,  12. 

Jewess,  education  of,  8,  11. 
Jews,  8-11,  16. 
John  of  Wessel,  86,  87. 
Joly,  Claude,  256,  261. 
Jomard,  516. 

Josephine,  The  Empress,  467. 
Joubert,  489. 
Jouffroy,  62,  491. 
Judgment,  100,  104,  156,  163,  191, 

281,  295,  296,  460,  467,  470. 
Juilly,  College  of,  150. 
Justice,  15,  30,  40,  280,  281,  303. 
Juvenal,  59. 

Kant,  200,  309,  332-338,  415,  422, 
536. 

Keilhau,  452,  464. 

Khung-tsze,  12,  13. 

Kindergartens,  447,  452,  457-465, 
476,  477. 

Kindermann,  416. 

Klopstock,  422. 

Knowledge,  15,  53,  80,  101,  104, 
113,  192,370,547;  clearness  of, 
53;  of  facts,  75,  129,  290;  a 
means,  41,  57, 91, 104 ;  of  nature, 
91,  96,  129,  295,  440;  source  of, 
58, 134,  313,  548 ;  before  practice, 
32,  57,  71,  135;  value,  60;  for 
women,  168,  175,  252,  282,  307, 
384,  488,  495,  500,  505. 

Konigberg,  University  of,  332. 


Krause,  457. 
Kriisi,  428,  432. 


Labor,  476,  495 ;  manual,  206,  209, 
226,  227,  263,  300,  398,  399,  424, 
441,  566. 

Laborde,  Comte  de,  516. 

La  Bruyere,  329. 

La  Chalotais,  278,  343-355,  363. 

La  Condamine,  283. 

Lacroix,  407. 

Lceta,  Letter  to,  64-67. 

Lafargue,  473. 

Lafayette,  Madame  de,  213. 

La  Fleche,  501,  College  of,  189. 

La  Fontaine,  240,  283,  295,  335. 

Lagrange,  405. 

Laisne',  515. 

Laissez  faire,  160,  208,  293. 

Lakanal,  139,  379,  394;  Law  of, 
402-408. 

Lambert,  Madame  de,  176. 

Lambruschini,  The  Abbe,  475. 

Lamoignon,  141. 

Lamy,  The  Pere,  150. 

Lancaster,  513,  514. 

Lancelot,  153,  154,  156,  217. 

Langethal,  451,  452. 

Language,  2,  70,  82,  116,  118,  126, 
134,  189,  323-326,  428,  431,  441, 
481,  547  ;  native,  48,  70, 113, 118, 
121,  126,  155,  183,  268,  357,  400, 
469-471. 

Lanthenas,  391,  392. 

Lao-tsze,  12,  13. 

La  Pitie',  514. 

Larochefoucauld-Liancourt,  516. 

Laromiguiere,  139. 

La  Salle,  112,  147,  254-277,  357, 
404,  414,  514. 

Lateran  Council,  69. 


588 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Latin,  the  study  of,  48,  70,  71,  90, 
91,  95,  101, 102, 105, 118, 121, 131, 
140,  144,  154,  183,  189,  205,  237, 
244,  257,  281,  317,  324,  326,  481, 
512,  547. 

Laurie,  S.  S.,  Comenius,  120. 

Lavallce,  218,  222,  226,  230. 

Laws,  44,  45,  46,  182,  333,  499-; 
educational,  399-402,  484,  509; 
Plato's,  30,  33,  34. 

Lay  teachers,  340-345, 406, 508, 533. 

Lecointe,  The  Fere,  150. 

Legendre,  394. 

Legislative  Assembly,  371, 373, 379, 
390,  422. 

Leibnitz,  136,  141,  196. 

Leisure,  87,  377,  381,  543. 

Lelong,  The  Pere,  150. 

Leonard  and  Gertrude,  Pestalozzi's, 
421. 

Lepelletier  Saint -Fargeau,  391, 
397. 

Lessing,  538. 

Letters  to  Luci/itis,  52. 

Letters  to  Pope  Innocent  XI.,  Bos- 
suet's,  182,  183. 

Levi  Alvares,  505. 

Lewes,  George  Henry,  41. 

L'Hopital,  53. 

Liberal  Education  of  Children,  of 
Erasmus,  88. 

Liberty,  G2,  70,  72,  93,  119, 151,  172, 
201,  207,  263,  285,  294,  308,  374, 

400,  420,  436,  441,  454,  490,  493, 
499,  565;    of  teaching,  371-396, 

401,  511,  513. 

Life,  family,  60,  424,  500,  546; 
monastic,  66,  146;  practical,  44, 
53,  60,  92,  93,  105,  115,  204,  279, 
296,  408,  529,  541,  562;  public, 
32,  115,  130,  279,  360,374,  400, 
489;  stages  of,  455,  456,  542. 


Lissa,  125. 

Literature,  11,  30,  78, 100, 166, 179, 
295,  351,  404,  558,  565  ;  classical, 
73,  80,  86,  95,  189,  324-326,  351, 


481,  547,  559;  Greek,  11,  48,  80, 
84,  559;  Latin,  46,  59,  84,  324- 
326  ;  profane,  64,  86,  87,  175,  219. 

Little  Schools  of  Fort  Royal,  140, 
153,  254. 

I.ittrc.  69,  233,  234,  383. 

Lives,  Plutarch's,  53. 

Locke,  49,  110,  126,  187,  194-210, 
249,  280,  296,  346,  363,  538,  561. 

Logic,  6,  24,  31,  52,  75,  76,315,316, 
321,  351,  470,  558. 

Logic,  Port  Koyal,  154,  243. 

Lorain,  P.,  519. 

Lorenz,  Life  of  Alcnin,  72. 

Louis  XIV.,  147, 182,  236,  279,  365, 
489. 

Louis-le-Grand,  College  of,  355. 

Louis  the  Pious,  68,  73. 

Lourmand,  505. 

Love,  31,  37,  66,  89,  162,  216,  302, 
440, 443, 455, 504, 515 ;  of  country, 
8,  44,  182,  308,  399,  489. 

Loyola,  140,  163;  Constitution.'!,  li'2. 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  2. 

Luccard,  267. 

Lucerne,  466,  468. 

Lupus  of  Ferrieres,  68,  70. 

Luther,  86,  113-120. 

Luxembourg,  141. 

Luxury,  effect  of,  36,  50,  182. 

Lyce'e,  131,  205,  327,  372,  382,  512. 

Lyceum,  22,  40. 

Lycurgus,  34,  56,  397. 

Lyons,  254,  255,  285,  368. 

Macaulay,  144. 
Madras,  514. 
Magdala,  90. 


INDEX. 


589 


Magistrates,  25,  28,  31,  71,  72. 
Maieutics,  23,  42,  72,  156,  326,  381, 

439,  471,  503. 
Maine  de  Biran,  139,  434. 
Maintenon,  Madame  de,  176,  218- 

231,  307,  48(5,  514. 
Maisonneuve,  Madame  de,  504. 
Maistre,  Joseph  de,  149,  511. 
Malebranche,  187,  192-194,  211. 
Man,  01,  62,  104;  conception  of,  4, 

188,  499,  539 ;  the  perfect,  7,  30, 

31,  57,  58,  59,  62,  98,  104,  172, 

278,  386,  451,  483,  500,  540. 
Mann,  Horace,  566,  567. 
Manners,  29,  59,  65,  81,  88,  89,  94, 

111,199,270;  of  Chinese,  12 ;  of 

Greeks,  21. 
Mansel,  194. 
Marat,  394. 
Mareellus,  105. 

Maitnholtz,  Baroness  von, 464, 465. 
Maria  Theresa,  415. 
Mark-nthal,  464. 
Marion,  H.,  196. 
Ma  rin  ontel,  325,  326,  339. 
Marriages.  38,  55,  384,  500. 
Marsolier,  243. 
Martin,  Ainie',  505. 
Martin,  Alexander,   Leu    Doctrines 

Pe'darjor/irjiies  des  Grecs,  18. 
Martin,  Henry,  183. 
Mascaron,  150. 
Massillon,  150. 
Mathematics,  6,  24,  31,  68,  76,  98, 

118,  189,  193,  323,  386,  437,  530; 

for  women,  50. 
Mather,  Cotton,  125. 
Maturity,  10,  40,  288. 
Manriac,  College  of,  141. 
Mayer,  Enrico,  47-">. 
Mean,  The,  93,  150,  151. 
Meditations,  Marcus  Aurelius,  58. 


Melancthon,  113. 
Melmoth,  Pliny,  21. 
Memorabilia,  The,  24,  25,  26,  32. 
Memoritsr,  11,  16,  49,  92,  105,  121, 

>133,  206,  207. 
Memory,  16,  42,  49,  58,  72,  81,  88, 

92.  105,  135,  191,  208,  317,  335, 

371,  400. 

Method,  15,  20,  22,  42,  49,  53,  59, 
72,  88,  90, 119,  126,  132,  269,  298, 

372,  468,  536,   539,  557;  attrac- 
tive, 33,  90,  97,  98,  101,  119,  206, 
415,  494,  495,  541;  Chinese,  13; 
dialectic,  32,  42,  74,  76 ;  didactic, 
22,    72,   97,    111 ;  educative,  467, 
469;  intuitive,  127,  132,  295-310, 
312,  346,  402-404,  415-445,  452, 
461-463,    among   the    Jews,   11  ; 
Port  Royal,   156,    162,  235;   of 
reading,  49,  107,  240,  241,  502; 
repulsive,  33,  119,  494,495;  So- 
cratic,  22-27,  72,  211,  335,  429, 
471 ;  synthetic,  313,  469. 

.!/<  tliods.  Lancelot's,  154. 

Meunier,  277. 

Michel,  475. 

Michelet,  122,  306,  392. 

Middendorf,  451,  452. 

Middle  Age,  The,  67-81,  110,  171; 

ignorance  in,  68,  70. 
Mildness,  10,  33,  56,  89,  160,  250, 

251,  433;  severe,  101,   161,  202, 

216,  264,  452,  492. 
Milton,  54. 
Mind,  95,  157,  470,   537,  564;  not 

tabula  rasa,  58,  208. 
Mirabeau,  369-372. 
Moderation,  11,  33,  82,  109,  170. 
Modesty,  21,  34,  58,  92,  153,  162. 
Moliere,  141,  176,  213. 
Monasteries,  69,  71,  167. 
Monge,  433. 


590 


THE   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY. 


Monitors,  131, 147, 258, 276, 514-519. 

Montagnards,  391,  394. 

Montaigne,  85,  101-110,  183,  202, 
280,  301,  490;  of  Greek  educa- 
tion, 18,  19,  29,  35. 

Montaigu,  College  of,  87. 

Montalivet,  395. 

Montausier,  147,  219. 

Montbrison,  342. 

Monteil,  76. 

Montesquieu,  20,  245,  329,  373. 

Montpellier,  366. 

Morality,  100,  105,  135,  370,  375 ; 
good  conduct,  15,  41,  57 ;  Pla- 
tonic, 30,  31,  34;  utilitarian,  12, 
302-305,  554. 

Morals,  5,  8,  14,  39,  42,  48,  50-60, 
105,  177,  186,  227,  252,  269,  320, 
337,  370,  375,  380,  384,  471-475, 
547,  565. 

Moravian  Brethren,  125. 

Moreau,  Marie,  261. 

Mothers,  39,  44,  48,  55,  90, 108, 127, 
129,  534 ;  duties  of,  291,  384, 422, 
456,  457,  469,  485,  486,  500,  546. 

Mother-tongue,  121,  144,  155,  204, 
243,  465-471. 

Motives,  300,  493. 

Moulins,  342. 

Miinchen-Buchsee,  434. 

Museum,  384,  414,  452. 

Music,  18,  20,  28,  31,  51,  52,  76,  98, 
119, 326,  396 ;  interdicted,  65, 175. 

Mutual  instruction,  131,  267,  392, 
424,  513-519,  534. 

Mysticism,  63,  125,  135,  193,  458, 
476;  criticism  of,  94,  447,  453. 

Mythology,  20,  563. 

Naples,  University  of,  77. 
Napoleon    I.,   360,   433,  443,   485, 
486,  510-513. 


National  Assembly,  369. 

National  Education,  of   La   Chalo- 

tais,  344-355. 
National  holidays,  393. 
Native  tongue,  48,  85,  89,  119,  121, 

144,  155,  204,  243,  351. 
Natural  history,  11,  40,  96,  97,  114, 

322,  350,  424,  433. 
Nature,  24,  31,  32,  48,  93,  170,  290, 

309,  310,  448,  456,  475,  476.  .V.:'. ; 

no  commencement  in,  496 ;  econ- 
omy  of,   3,  286,  423,  448,  496; 

following,  2,  36,   290,  312,  347, 

349,   401,   4'33,    503, .  529,    501 ; 

human,  46,  48, 159,  169,  217.  -JM',. 

333,   454,    491,    532,    536,   550; 

morality  in,  448;  return  to,  5">3  ; 

study  of,  91,  93,  96, 118,  121,  132, 

133,  290. 
Navillc,  74,  467. 
Necker    de     Saussure,     Madame, 

493-500. 
Neufchatel,  434. 
Neuhof,  419,  420. 
New  Education,  The,  93,  123,  133, 

190,  208,  284-310,  343,  347,  456, 

460,  542. 
Newspapers,  331. 
Nicole,    65,    154-159,   217;    Logic, 

154 ;  Education  of  a  Prince,  154. 
Xiederer,  436. 
Niemeyer,  414. 
Nirvana,  5. 
Nisard,  237. 
Normal    Schools,    255,    259,    261, 

262,  357,  367,  387,  404,  405,  406, 

412,  423,  429,  464,  501. 
North,  Sir  Thomas,  Plutarch,  54. 
Novum  Oryanum,  123. 
Number,  428,  430,  441 ;  of  pupils, 

10. 


INDEX. 


591 


Oberlin,  415. 

ObjeeHessons,  97,  98,  111,  133, 
170,  192,  247,  293,  295,  400,  415, 
430,  473,  502,  503,  558,  503. 

Obligation.  See  Compulsion,  Edu- 
cation, State. 

Observation,  75,  96,  97,  98,  123, 
133,  136,  192,  293,  461,  558. 

Old  Education,  The,  92,  116,  144, 
192,  283,  364,  460,  547. 

Olynthiacs,  113. 

Optimism,  169,  201,  285,  333,  454, 
491,  551. 

Oratorians,  150-153,  192,  369,  395. 

Oratory,  47,  52. 

Oratory,  The,  150. 

Orlx's  scnsualium  pictus,  of  Come- 
nius,  127,  134,  135,  415. 

Order  of  Study,  of  Erasmus,  88. 

Organization,  414,  456;  of  Chris- 
tian education,  62,  115,  259  ;  of 
instruction,  363,  368,  510;  of 
schools,  9,  27,  37,  69,  71,  77,  117, 
127,  128,  265,  396 ;  of  the  State, 
27,  35. 

Orleans,  103,  120,  342. 

Ormuzd,  14. 

Orphan  Asylum,  Francke's,  414. 

Ovid,  87. 

Oxcnstiern,  125. 

Oxford,  University  of,  77, 195. 

Facatula,  64. 

Padua,  University  of,  78. 

Petdagogwm,  414. 

Painting,  18,  98,  204. 

Palatine  school,  72. 

Palestra,  19. 

Pamiers,  College  of,  141. 

Pansophia,  100,  125,  129,  297,  374, 

411,468,480,531,565. 
Pantagruel,  96. 


Pantheism,  453 ;  of  Hindoos,  2-4. 

Pape-Carpentier,  Madame,  501-504. 

Papinian,  95. 

Paris,  358,  433 ;  Normal  School  at, 
405,  406;  University  of,  75,  79, 
141,  232,  233-235,  356,  404. 

Paris/i  School,  The,  257,  258. 

Parliaments,  French,  340,  343. 

Pascal,  156,  162. 

Pascal,  Jacqueline,  154,  214-217; 
Regulations  for  Children,  154, 
215,  216. 

Pasquier,  69,  515. 

Patak,  125. 

Patience,  10,  58,  79,  160,  251,  521. 

Paul  III.,  Pope,  141. 

Paula,  64-67. 

Paulet,  514. 

Pauline  de  Meulan,  Madame  Gui- 
zot,  490-494. 

Pecaut,  464. 

Pedagogics,  358,  372. 

Pedagogue,  19,  45,  46,  102,  292. 

Pedagogy,  46,  52,  53,  73,  83,  85, 
91,  103,  121,  165,  190,  278,  311, 
358,  454;  English,  187,  207, 
535-570;  German,  413;  of  the 
Jansenists,  158;  of  the  Jesuits, 
148;  modern,  190,  192,  278,  456, 
558. 

Pedants,  74,  92,  105,  146,  168,  204, 
328. 

Penances,  260,  272. 

People,  The,  14,  16,  21,  33,  55,  78, 
113,  114,  130,  209,  253,  308,  320, 
372,  380,  415,  420,  441,  480,  484, 
565;  exclusion  of,  15,  28,  40,  54, 
70,  80,  143,  352,  540. 

Perez,  494,  526,  564. 

Perfection,  7,  14,  33,  59,  63,  99, 
104,  172,  278,  386,  451,483,  500, 
540. 


THE   HISTORY    OF    PEDAGOGY. 


Pericles,  22,  40,  46. 

Perigordian,  102. 

Persia,  14  ;  education  by  the  State, 
1(3,  35,  36. 

Personality,  451. 

Pessimism,  159-162,  532,  533, 
555. 

Pestalozzi,  122,  125,  413-445,  448, 
501,  514,  537,  553,  555. 

Peter  the  Great,  198. 

Philanthropists,  414. 

Philip  of  Macedon,  11. 

Philosophers,  21,  22,  45,  55,  57, 
311,  479. 

Philosophy,  28,  47,  51,  52,  74,  77, 
99.  103,  105,  129,  145,  151,  152, 
179,  183,  234,  237,  247,  315,  326, 
342,  351,  454,  538;  definition, 
106;  of  education,  126,  136,158, 
163,  188,  279,  310,  459,  497,  535- 
570;  Greek,  11,  30,40,  211;  for 
magistrates,  28. 

Phoenix,  46. 

Physics,  52,  129,  206,  247,  292,  322, 
323,  350,  396. 

Piccolomini,  ^Eneas  Sylvius,  79,  80. 

Pictet,  482. 

Pietists,  414. 

Pillans,  519. 

Plan  of  a  University,  Diderot's, 
320. 

Plato,  11,  22,  24,  27,  42,  46,  52,  56. 
59,  91,  95,  324,  397,  529 ;  aim  of, 
34;  caste  in,  28;  of  the  drama, 
30,  56;  of  music,  20,  31. 

Platter,  Thomas,  132. 

Play,  458,  460,  461. 

Pleasures,  294,  328. 

Plessier,  261. 

Plessis,  College  of,  286. 

Pliny,  Letters,  21,  59. 

Pluche,  The  Abbe,  283. 


Plutarch,  45,  53-58,  285;  educa- 
tion of  women,  34,  35,  55;  train- 
ing of  children,  54,  89. 

Poetry,  30,  56,  87. 

Poitiers,  342. 

Poland,  125,  308. 

Politeness,  29,  88,  89,  161,  227,270, 
467. 

Politics,  32,  37,  42,  130,  360,  374, 
489,  542;  Aristotle's,  37,  40; 
Plato's,  28;  versatility  in,  373. 

Polybius,  47. 

Ponocrates  of  Rabelais,  93-100. 

Pontchartrain,  de,  217. 

Port  Royal,  152-163,215-217;  de- 
molition of,  153. 

Portugal,  The  King  of,  341 

Positivists,  529-531. 

Pourchot,  235,  261. 

Practice,  105,  134,  135,  156,  355, 
471 ;  of  education,  85. 

Prague,  University  of,  77. 

Praise,  49,  50,  67, 146, 162, 169,  532. 

Precision,  188,  240,  264,  325. 

Priests,  116  ;  as  educators,  5,  6,  15, 
140-163. 

Principles,  17,  454 ;  of  education, 
33,  37,  46,  83,  121,  135,  158,  190, 
191,  309,  313,  340,  430,  439-441, 
483,  522,  526,  534,  566-570. 

Professors,  21,  22,  75,  233,  358,  377, 
512. 

Progress,  381 ;  popular  instruction, 
8,  12,  38,  112-136,  363,  47!>. 

Progressive  Education,  of  Madame 
Necker,  494-500. 

Pronunciation,  11,  51. 

Protestantism,  112-136. 

Protestants,  85. 

Proverbs,  7. 

Prudence,  100,  104,  105,  108,  161, 
199,  280,  281,  545. 


INDEX. 


593 


Psychology,  24,  42,  46,  50, 135,  194, 

251,  284,  312,  314,  335,  439,  454, 
488,  492,  497,  508,  534,  537,  539, 
558. 

Public  schools,  117,  130,  254,  415. 
Punishment,  152, 160, 180, 200,  249- 

252,  270-276,  336,  551-553 ;  cor- 
poral, 6,  21,  51, 102, 122, 147, 148, 
194,  201-203,  271-275. 

Purity,  30,  48,  66,  451. 
Purna,  4,  5. 
Pythagoras,  62. 

Quadrivium,  75,  76. 

Questioning,  The  art  of,  22,  23,  25, 

42,  72,  170,  267. 
Quick,   R.    H.,    208;    Educational 

Reformers,  121. 
Quintilian,  46,  47-52,  89,  239,  241 ; 

of  indulgence,  50. 

Kabaud  Saint-Etienne,  393. 

Rabbins,  10,  11. 

Rabelais,  91-100,  197,  297,  490. 

Racine,  176,  213,  219,  243,  316. 

Rambouillet,  Hotel  de,  219. 

Ramsauer,  431,  434. 

Rain  us,  85,  156,  232. 

Rapet,  475, 

Ratich,  121. 

Rationalism,  philosophic,  490,  493. 

Jin/in    Studiorum,   of    the    Jesuits, 

142. 
Reading,  11,  49,  51,  67,  69,  75,  86, 

90,  107,  156,  204,  225,  239,  268, 

326,  424,  440. 

Realism,  91,  204,  211,  308,  309. 
Reason,  31,  32,  38,  42,  57,  100,  104, 

108,  122,  135,  136,  174,  190,  284, 

314,  33:;,  335,  444,  454,  491,  493. 
Reasoning,  23,  74,  82,  123,  165,  191, 

267,  296,  316,  403. 


Recreation,  87,  93,  94,  119,  146, 
248,  251,  294,  393,  441,  458,  460, 
461 ;  mathematical,  348,  350  ; 
physical,  350,  396. 

Recruitment  of  teachers,  367,  513. 

Redolfi,  3. 

Refinement,  conventional,  12,  36, 
89,  143,  227. 

Reflection,  191,  208,  317,  318,  444, 
558. 

Reform,  4,  36,  73,  83,  220,  235,  279, 
322,  381,  416,  496. 

Reformation,  The,  80,  84,  93,  99, 
113-136. 

Refutation  of  Helvetius  on  Man,  Di- 
derot's, 319. 

Reid,  482. 

Reims,  259,  260. 

Religion,  4,  5,  8,  30,  42,  44,  58,  62, 
73,  98,  99,  118,  228,  303,  305,326, 
337,  375,  381,  453,  489,  554. 

Re'musat,  Madame  de,  487-490. 

Renaissance,  71, 80,  81, 83-111,  234. 

Renan,  325,  Vie  de  Jesus,  11 ;  edu- 
cation of  women,  34. 

Repetition,  11,  121,  135,  173. 

Republic,  Plato's,  27-33. 

Respect,  for  teacher,  6,  10,  181, 
184,  200,  532. 

Rewards,  67,  147,  194,  249,  250, 
276,  352,  493,  522,  532. 

Rhetoric,  6,  18,  21,  47,  48,  51,  71, 
85,  109,  144,  171,  189,  316,  321. 

Rhythm,  20. 

Richter,  536. 

Rir/hts  of  J/an,  Talleyrand's,  375. 

Robespierre,  391,  393,  397,  402. 

Robinson  Crusoe,  298. 

Rochefoucault,  103. 

Rochow,  415. 

Rod,  The,  6,  7,  51,  76, 102, 147, 148, 
202,  273. 


594 


THE  HISTORY   OF  PEDAGOGY. 


Rodez,  141,  368. 

Roger  de  Guimps,  419,  425. 

Rolland,  279, 343, 355-359 ;  Law  of, 

399,  400. 
Rollin,  50,  188,  202,  232-252,  283, 

317,  349,  357,  514. 
Roman  Law,  44. 
Rome,  43-60. 
Romme,  379,  391, 393, 399 ;  Law  of, 

399,  400. 

Rouen,  263,  270,  364. 
Rousseau,  27, 36,  38,  97, 98, 110, 126, 

171,  196,  197,  198,  202,  209,  210, 

278-310,  332-337,  348,  363,  368, 

415,  426,  442,  448,  481,  496,  553. 
Routine,  3,  12,  74,  92, 140, 191,  232, 

235,  265,  333,  536. 
Royer-Collard,  515. 
Rudolstadt,  452,  457. 
Rules,  134,  156,  264,  471. 
Russell,  Doctor,  202. 

Sacrifices,  4,  30,  259,  260,  417. 

Saint  Cyr,  218-231,  307,  486. 

Saint  Cyran,  153,  160. 

Sainte-Beuve,  155,  479,  491. 

Saint  Francois  de  Salles,  225. 

Saint  Gall,  68. 

Saint  Germain,  485. 

Saint  Hilaire,  Barthelemy,  522, 524. 

Saint-Just,  399. 

Saint  Leu,  481. 

Saint  Malo,  344. 

Saint  Pierre,  The   Abbe,  280-282, 

297. 

Saint  Pierre,  Bernardin  de,  394. 
Saint   Simon,   148,   166,   181,   183, 

527,  528. 
Saint  Yon,  263. 
Salamanca,  77. 
Salary,  of  teachers,  366,  367,  392, 

402,  410,  417,  519,  520. 


Salia'n  hymns,  44. 

Salzmun,  415. 

Sauvan,  Mademoiselle,  504,  518. 

Savages,  education  of,  1,  13,  292, 
541. 

Savoyard  Vicar's  Profession  of  Faith, 
Rousseau's,  305. 

Sazarin,  518. 

Schiller,  538. 

Schleiermacher,  537. 

Schmid,  434,  436. 

Schmidt,  Charles,  538. 

Scholasticism,  71,  74;  criticism  of, 
92,  107,  116,  149,  235. 

School-house,  131,  132,  367. 

Schools,  113,  116,  117,  401,  422; 
adornment  of,  103,  131  ;  at 
Athens,  19,  20,  21 ;  central,  407, 
408;  in  China,  13;  claustral,  69, 
75,  76,  116,  282,  345;  etymology 
of  the  word,  87 ;  European  type 
of,  131;  infant,  4.j7-4(>.">,  f,0l- 
504;  in  India,  6,  514;  Jewish,  9; 
Latin,  119,  128,  130,  131,  144, 
346  ;  of  the  Middle  Age,  69,  77, 
78 ;  Palatine,  72  ;  primary,  120, 
128,  190,  234,  254-277,  365,  383, 
426,  477,  510,  520-525;  public, 
114,  128,  135,  415;  real,  414; 
at  Rome,  45,  52;  secular,  114, 
130,  233,  254,  278,  297,  318,  338, 
509,  522. 

Schoepfer,  Captain,  433. 

Schultaus,  146. 

Schultess,  Anna,  419. 

Science,  40,  51,  76,  77,  96,  97,  100, 
105,  151,  183,  247,  281,  297,  ;5:i3, 
386,  404,  431,  512,  558,  550;  of 
education,  22,  33,  37-41,  42,  54, 
85,  05,  104,  363,  409,  435-470; 
neglect  of,  74,  86,  91,  145,  401. 

Scipio,  105. 


INDEX. 


Scudery,  Mademoiselle  de,  226. 

Sculpture,  98. 

Secularization,   114,   130,  233,254, 

278,  207,  318,  319,  338,  340-344, 

509,  522. 
Se'guier,  141. 

Self-abasement,  4,  65,  161,  221, 260. 
Self-consciousness,   4,   24,   42,  57, 

133,  158,  317,  318,  428,  458. 
Self-control,  57,  58,  152,  196,  499. 
Selfishness,  4,  108,  300,  302,  499, 

536,  542. 
Self-renunciation,  4,  5,  63, 148, 149, 

215,  259,  340. 
Seminary  for  Schoolmasters,  261, 

277,  357,  367,  387,  404. 
Semler,  414. 
Seneca,  52,  53,  59,  91. 
Sensationalism,  133,  187,  193,  208, 

295,  328,  346,  381,  403,  554,  561. 
Senses,  132,  133,  135,  158,  193,  194, 

283-310 ;  education  of,  295,  314, 

328,  449,  496,  503,  542-555. 
Sensibilities,  285,  330 ;  training  of, 

2,  38, 133,  193,  200,  201,  301,  329, 

330,  403,  503,  554. 
Sentenis,  304. 
Sentiments,  302-305. 
Sequence  of  studies,  157,  323,  403, 

404,  452,  463,  474,  548,  558. 
Seven  Liberal  Arts,  The,  75,  76, 

119. 
Se'vigne',  Madame  de,  152,  198,  213, 

489. 
Sexes,  equality  of,  241,  256,  384, 

479, 488 ;  separation  of,  8, 34, 256, 

378,  396,  402,  466. 
Shaftesbury,  Lord,  195. 
Shakespeare,  54,  320. 
Sicilian!,  504. 
Sidonius,  Apollinaris,  68. 
Sieyes,  391-396. 


Signal,  266,  273. 
i  Silence,  265,  266. 
Sill,  Miss  E.  R.,  310. 
Simon,  J.,  7,  364,  523,  533. 
Simplicity,  121,  157,  158,  221,  228, 

229,  403,  439,  474. 
Singing,  51,  119,  214,  420,  433. 
Site,  for  schools,  6,  20,  131,  132. 
Slaves,  39,  40 ;  as  teachers,  45. 
Smith,  Adam,  510. 
Society,  3,  54,  61,  70,  98,  287,  298, 

489,  500,  509,  523 ;  unity  of,  18, 

37,  73,  98,  115,  125,282,  359,515, 

566. 

Socrates,  22,  42,  52. 
Socratic   method,   22-27,   32,   211, 

429,  471. 

Solomon,  9,  99,  119. 
Solon,  19,  21. 
Sophie,  305-307. 
Sophists,  21. 
Soul,  3,  38, 315,  451 ;  culture  of,  58, 

84,  193,  469,  546;   development 

of,  18,  19,  28,  29,  33,  38,  57,  91, 

99,  136,  192,  288,  329,  468,  495- 

500,  565. 
Spain,  77,  132. 
Sparta,  17,  345. 
Specialists,  103,  209,  300,  325. 
Spelling,  155. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  29,  66,  100,  194, 

207,  313,  322,  325,  507,  538-555 ; 

of  caste,  3;  prejudices  of,  546, 

547,  552,  553-555. 
Sphericity,  of  Froebel,  450,  451,  459. 
Spirit,  12,  13,  92,  101,  325,  547 ;  of 

Christianity,    61,   62;    national, 

359,  401,  489,  490,  523,  565;  of 

Protestantism,  113,  120. 
Spiritual  life,  18,  38,  57,  208.  279, 

316. 
Spiritualistic  School,  523,  533. 


596 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Spontaneity,  4,  24,  208 ;  in  educa- 
tion, 17,  31,  33,  67,  101,  114,  130, 
284-309,  462,  454,  497,  647 ;  sup- 
pressed, 12,  114,  143,  271. 

Stael,  Madame  de,  420,  495. 

Stanz,  419,  423. 

Stapfer,  466. 

State,  The,  12,  27,  54,  61,  330,  341 ; 
duty  to  educate,  13,  16,  27,  38, 
42,  50,  81,  115,  233,  235,  238,  250, 
252,  265,  277,  282,  321,  345,  353, 
360,  363-389,  398,  415,  509,  520- 
525,  565 ;  physical  education  by, 
19,  29. 

States-General,  120,  366,  368. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  325,  482,  484. 

Stoics,  52,  58,  141,  292. 

Strasburg,  College  of,  85. 

Studies,  20,  31,  34,  49,  51,  76,  88, 
105,  118,  119,  296,  402,  539,  558; 
Bacon  of,  32,  123;  classical,  143, 
162,  163,  204,  211,  252,  283,  317, 
321,  324-326,  351,  352,  481,  512, 
547 ;  disciplinary,  40,  60,  80,  88, 
118,  203,  204,  211,  296-298,  539, 
562;  diversity  of,  129,  181,448; 
gradation  of,  38,  80,  88,  90,  122, 
130,  131,  204,  233,  267,  495,  520, 
525,  558,  559;  Jewish,  11  ;  pain- 
ful, 33,  171,  207,  217,  252,  346, 
476,  495 ;  pleasurable,  33,  49,  79, 
171,  181,  206,  240,  348.  457-465, 
495,  541,  549;  sequence  of,  157, 
323,  403,  452,  463,  474,  548,  558 ; 
simultaneous,  51,  152,  240,  266, 
267,  424,  515;  utilitarian,  40,  60, 
80,  98,  118,  203,  211,  296-298, 
539,  562 ;  educational  value  of, 
60,  105,  204,  323-326,  339,  388, 
469,  557,  558;  for  women,  174, 
384,  486,  495,  500,  505. 

Sturm,  86. 


Sweden,  125,  353. 
Switzerland,  465,  524. 
Summaries,  15,  41,  59,  81,  110,136, 

163,  185,  210,  230,  252,  277,  310, 

338,  360,  388,  411,  444,  475,  506, 

534,  568. 
Supervision,  359,  369,  392,  396,  399, 

401,  486,  510. 
Syllogism,  74,  80,  85,  149. 
Symmetry,  31,  38,  39,  82,  84,  93, 

163,  394,  896,  444,  458,  547. 
Synthesis,  313. 

Tabula  rasa,  58,  208. 

Talent,  3,  42,  57,  93,  158,  286,  328 ; 
encouragement  of,  377. 

Talleyrand,  369,  372-379,  434. 

Talmud,  10,  11. 

Teachers,  13,  50,  53,  69,  117,  251, 
257,  265,  266,  292,  365,  367,  392, 
470,  479,  500,  513,522,  527 ;  Aris- 
totle, 36,  41 ;  faults  of,  202  ;  re- 
spect for,  6, 10,  100, 120, 396, 504, 
521,  522,  532;  as  tradesmen,  367, 
519;  training  of,  405,  504;  vir- 
tues of,  10,  50, 251,  255, 455,  W  ; 
women  as,  44,  384,  458,  478-507. 

"  Teachers'  fairs,"  367. 

Teaching,  41,  46,  49,  53,  79,  88,  90, 
114,  122,  226,  246,  267,  269,  352, 
426,  427 ;  of  geography,  403,  404 ; 
of  history,  326,349;  of  objects, 
97,  132,  293. 

Teaching  Congregations,  The,  138- 
163,  192,  253,  486,  509. 

TelemacJius,  Fe'nelon's,  166, 175, 182, 
306. 

Temperance,  14,  15,  18,  35,  36, 194, 
197,  292,  381. 

Tennis,  94,  104. 

Terence,  87,  183,  324. 

Term,  106,  107,  133,  326. 


INDEX. 


597 


Tertullian,  64, 

Text-books,  132,  173,  352,  360,  368, 
393,  403, 429,  441 ;  uniformity  in, 
121. 

Theme,  158,  244. 

Themistocles,  20. 

Theology,  69,  74,  77,  174,  234, 
337. 

Theory,  17,  60,  74,  134;  of  educa- 
tion, 85,  340,  509,  525-570. 

Theresa,  Saint.  64. 

The'ry,  362. 

Things,  85,  97,  106,  107,  132,  133, 
293,  415. 

Thomassin,  The  Pere,  150,  152. 

Thought,  3,  57,  74,  97, 107, 157,  316, 
469;  life  of,  41,  63,  193,  325,  326, 
381,  468,  475,  565. 

Thoughts,  Locke's,  195-208. 

Thucydides,  33,  43,  245. 

Thuringia,  447. 

Tobler,  428. 

Tournon,  College  of,  141. 

Trades,  118,  119,  206,  209,  263,  300, 
384,  400,  401,  519. 

Tradition,  13,  143,  333. 

Tragedy,  30,  285. 

Training,  41,  111 ;  of  children,  54, 
129  ;  mental,  18,  19,  20,  24,  58, 
95, 157,203,324-326,381,468-475, 
490,  548  ;  physical,  18,  19,  39,41, 
79,  80,  94, 197,  283, 496,  554,  555 ; 
of  the  senses,  38,  96,  97, 133, 193, 
208,  283,  289-308,  503;  of  will, 
499,  547. 

Translation,  Value  of,  327,  330. 

Treatise  on  Pedaqor/y,  Kant's, 
332-338. 

Treatise  on  Studies,  Eollin's,  235. 

Trivium,  75,  76. 

Truth,  24,  151,  193,  301. 

Turgot,  359. 


Tutor,  69,  327,  518. 
Twelve  Tables,  44. 

Uniformity,  264,  281. 

Unity,  18,  450 ;  of  education,  455 ; 

in   teaching,  129,  152,  288,  359, 

509. 
Universal  Instruction,  Jacotot's,  526, 

527. 

Universals,  32,  453,  627. 
University,   22,   75,  77,  128,   252; 

Diderot's,  326,  327  ;  for  women, 

486. 
University  of  France,  233, 243,  321, 

341,  343,  356,  360,  509-512,  533. 
Unselfishness,  10,  78,  136,  522. 
Utility,  40,  44,  60,  115,   136,  189, 

196,  200,  20-1,  296-310,  408,  529, 

538, 541, 562  ;  of  culture,  324-326, 

381,  523. 
Ursulines,  214. 

Values,  educational,  60,  323-326, 
339,  388,  469,  657. 

Van  Laun,  213. 

Varet,  154,  159 ;  Christian  Educa- 
tion, 154. 

Varro,  47. 

Vaughan  and  Davies,  Republic,  31. 

Venice,  79. 

Vernier,  467. 

Version,  158,  244. 

Veturia,  45. 

Vice,  cause  of,  50,  116,  381 ;  how 
overcome,  56,  118,  160,  185,  381. 

Vienna,  University  of,  77. 

Villemain,  236,  304,  468. 

Vincennes,  614. 

Vinet,  500. 

Virchow,  539. 

Virgil,  64,  87,  97,  324. 


598 


THE   HISTORY   OF   PEDAGOGY. 


Virtue,  26,  30,  35,  39,  104,  199,  200, 
2  '0,  381 ;  moral,  280  ;  passive,  6, 
6 '),  80,  226  ;  Roman,  44,  62. 

Yittorino  da  Feltre,  78. 

Vives,  91,  132. 

Vivonne,  Catherine  de,  219. 

Voltaire,  86, 141,  236,  279,  329,  331, 
344,  345,  368. 

Vulliemin,  435. 

Warriors,  15,  28,  31,  70. 

Wartensee,  456. 

Washington,  422. 

Watson,  Quintilian,  50. 

Wessel,  John  of,  87. 

Wittenberg,  University  of,  113. 

Whipping,  G,  7, 51,  76,  102, 147, 148. 

Will,  13,  61,  194,  201,  334,  372, 476, 
484,  543,  547,  552,  553. 

Wine,  194,  292,  381. 

Wisdom,  15,  41,  48,  57 ;  the  high- 
est, 3,  57,  104,  106,  135,295,381. 

Wolker,  Doctor,  24G. 

Women,  5,  16,  34,  44,  48,  60,  90, 
488,  506 ;  education  of,  5,  15,  16, 
27,  34,  35,  48,  55,  56,  79,  80,  90, 


91,  109,  110,  115,  117,  128,  168, 
174-176,  212-231,  252,  282, 
305-307,  328,  384,  464 ;  unsexed, 
27,  506. 

Words,  85,  106,  107,  132,  134,  144, 
325,  326,  415,  430. 

Wordsworth,  54. 

Works,  of  Comenius,  125-127 ;  of 
Diderot,  319 ;  of  Erasmus,  87-90; 
of  Fenelon,  166;  of  Madame  de 
Genlis,  480 ;  of  Madame  de 
Maintenon.  222;  of  Madame 
Pape-Carpentk-r,  501-503  ;  of 
Pestalozzi,  421,  422,  431,  438; 
of  Plutarch,  53-58. 

Worthington,  Miss,  171,  336. 

Writing,  6,  11,  49,  67,  86,  88,  90, 
204,  268;  schools,  120,  254. 

Wurtzburg,  466. 

Xenophon,  14,  34,  35,  36,  55. 
Yverdun,  419,  420,  434,  449. 

Zurich,  418. 
Zwingli,  113,  114. 


EDUCATION. 


"Thou  that  teachest  another,  teachest  thou  not  thyself?" 


"P*OR  American  Schools  and  American  Scholarship  there  is  no 
more  healthful  sign  than  the  newly-awakened  interest  of  teach- 
ers in  all  that  pertains  to  successful  work  and  personal  culture.  At 
the  outset  of  this  great  and  wide-spread  movement  in  favor  of  better 
methods  and  worthier  results,  it  was  but  natural  that  the  practical  side 
of  education  should  be  treated  out  of  all  proportion,  while  its  theoreti- 
cal and  historical  aspects  should  be  somewhat  overlooked.  But  if 
education  is  to  become  a  science  and  teaching  to  be  practised  as  an 
art.  one  means  to  this  end  is  to  gather  and  examine  what  has  been 
done  by  those  who  have  been  engaged  therein,  and  whose  position  and 
success  have  given  them  a  right  to  be  heard.  Another  and  not  less 
potent  means  is,  to  gain  a  clear  comprehension  of  the  psychological 
basis  of  the  teacher's  work,  and  a  familiar  acquaintance  with  the 
methods  which  rest  upon  correct  psychological  principles.  As  con- 
tributions of  inestimable  value  to  the  history,  the  philosophy,  and  the 
practice  of  education,  we  take  pleasure  in  calling  the  attention  of 
teachers  to  our  books  on  Education,  mentioned  in  the  following  pages. 
It  is  our  purpose  to  add  from  time  to  time  such  books  as  have  con- 
tributed or  may  contribute  so  much  toward  the  solution  of  educational 
problems  as  to  make  them  indispensable  to  every  true  teacher's  library. 

The  follow  it,  y  good  words,  and  also  the  opinions  quoted 
under  the  several  volumes,  are  an  earnest  of  the  appre- 
ciation in  which  the  enterprise  is  held  :  — 


Dr.  Win.  T.  Harris,  Concord,  Mass.  : 
I  do  not  think  that  you  have  ever  printed 
a  book  on  education  that  is  not  worthy 
to  go  on  any  teacher's  reading-list,  and 
the  best  list.  (.\farcA  26,  1886.) 

J.  W.  Stearns,  Prof,  of  the  Science 
and  Art  of  Teaching,  Univ.  of  I  [  "is.  : 
Allow  me  to  say  that  the  list  of  books 
v.hich  you  are  publishing  for  the  use  of 


teachers  seems  to  me  of  exceptional  ex- 
cellence. I  have  watched  the  growth  of 
the  list  with  increasing  pleasure,  and  I 
feel  that  you  have  done  a  service  of  great 
value  to  teachers.  (May  26,  1886.) 

Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  Acting 
Prof,  of  Phil.,  Ethics,  and  Psychology, 
Columbia  College,  N.  Y. :  I  am  greatly 
interested  in  your  series  of  pedagogical 


Educational  Classics. 


The  following  books  contribute  so  much  toward  the  solution  of 
educational  problems  as  to  make  them  indispensable  to  every 
teacher's  library. 

Extracts  from  Rousseau's  Em  He. 

Containing  the  Principal  Elements  of  Pedagogy.  With  an  Introduc- 
tion and  Notes  by  JULES  STEEG,  Paris,  Depute  de  la  Gironde.  Trans- 
lated by  ELEANOR  WORTHINGTON,  recently  of  the  Cook  County  Normal 
School,  111.  5  by  -j\  inches.  Cloth.  157  pp.  Price  by  mail,  80  cts. ; 
Introduction  price,  75  cts. 

"  There  are  fifty  pages  of  the   Emile   that   should   be   bound   in   velvet  and 
gold."  —  VOLTAIRE. 

M.  Jules  Steeg  has  rendered  a  real  service  to  French  and  Ameri- 
can teachers  by  these  judicious  selections  from  Rousseau's  Emile. 

Emile  is  like  an  antique  mirror  of  brass,  —  it  reflects  the 
feitures  of  educational  humanity  no  less  faithfully  than  one  of  more 
modern  construction.  In  these  few  pages  will  be  found  the  germ  of 
all  that  is  useful  in  present  systems  of  education,  as  well  as  most  of 
the  ever-recurring  mistakes  of  well-meaning  zealots. 

The  eighteenth  century  translations  of  this  wonderful  book  have 
for  many  readers  the  disadvantage  of  an  English  style  long  disused. 
It  is  hoped  that  this  attempt  at  a  new  translation  may  at  least  have 
the  merit  of  being  in  the  dialect  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  may 
thus  reach  a  wider  circle  of  readers. 

Pestalozzi's  Leonard  and  Gertrude. 

Translated  and  abridged  by  EVA  CHANNING.  With  an  Introduction  by 
G.  STANLEY  HALL,  Professor  of  Pedagogy  in  Johns  Hopkins  University. 
5  by  7}  inches.  Cloth.  xii+ 193  pp.  Price  by  mail,  80  cts.;  Intro- 
duction price,  75  cts. 


ED  UCA  TIONA  L    CLA  SSICS. 


Externally,  "  Leonard  and  Gertrude"  occupies  a  somewhat  pecu- 
liar position  in  literature,  since  it  is  neither  precisely  a  scory  nor  a 
pedagogical  treatise.  It  might  rather  be  called  a  realistic  picture  of 
Swiss  peasant  life  in  the  last  century,  which,  if  not  of  absorbing 
interest,  yet  contains  much  that  is  curious  and  instructive  concern- 
ino-  old  manners  and  customs.  But  the  moral  value  of  the  work  is 

O 

far  mo/e  than  this,  in  describing  the  measures  taken  to  reform 
the  corruption  and  raise  the  moral  standard  of  the  little  village  of 
Bonnal,  the  author  expresses  his  views  on  some  of  the  greatest 
social  and  political  questions  of  all  ages.  His  opinions  and  theories 
on  educational  topics  are  scattered  incidentally  throughout  the  book. 

[From  Translator"1*  Preface. 

This  is  a  book  which  all  good  teachers  should  read  with  care; 
and  having  read  it,  will  thank  the  translator  for  the  great  and  dis- 
criminating labor  she  has   spent  upon   the   very   voluminous   and 
intractable  original  in  converting  it  into  the  present  pleasing  form. 
\_From  Introduction  by  G.  Stanley  Hall. 

or,    The  Doctrine  of  Education. 

A  translation  from  JEAN  PAUL  FREDERICK  RICHTER.  5  by  7j  inches. 
Cloth.  xliv  +  413  pp.  Price  by  mail,  $1.15;  Introduction  price, 
$1.00. 

We  add  this  volume  to  the  series  in  the  belief  that  it  will  tend  to 
ameliorate  that  department  of  education  which  is  most  neglected 
and  yet  needs  most  care,  —  home  training. 

Among  other  topics  it  treats  of:  — 

The  Importance  of  Education.  Development  of  the  Desire  for  Intel- 
The  Spirit  and  Principle  of  Education.  lectual  Progress. 

To  Discover  and  to  Appreciate  the  Speech  and  Writing. 

Individuality  of  the  Ideal  Man.  Attention  and  the  Power  of  Adaptive 

Religious  Education.  Combination. 

The  Beginning  of  Education.  Development  of  Wit. 

The  Joyousness  of  Children.  Development  of  Reflection. 

Games  of  Children.  Abstraction  and  Self-Knowledge,  to- 

Music.  gether  with  an  extra  paragraph  on 
Commands,  Prohibitions,  Punish-  the  Powers  of  Action  and  Business. 

ments.  On  the  Education  of  the  Recollection 

Physical  Education.  —  not  of  the  Memory. 

Female  Education.  Development  of  the  Sense  of  Beauty. 

The  Moral  Education  of  Boys.  Classical  Education. 


ED  UCA  7  'ION A  L    CLA  SSICS. 


Rosmini's  Method  in  Education. 

Translated  from  the  Julian  of  ANTONIO  RoSMINl  SERBATI  by  Mrs. 
WILLIAM  GREY,  whose  name  has  been  widely  known  in  England  for 
many  years  past  as  a  leader  in  the  movement  for  the  Higher  Education 
of  Women.  5  by  7^  inches.  Cloth.  About  400  pp.  Price  by  mail, 
$1.75;  Introduction  price,  3i.6o. 

This  is  a  work  of  singular  interest  for  the  educational  world,  and 
especially  for  all  those  who  desire  to  place  education  on  a  scientific 
basis. 

It  is  an  admirable  exposition  of  the  method  of  presenting  knowl- 
edge to  the  human  mind  in  accordance  with  the  natural  laws  of  its 
development ;  and  the  disciples  of  Frcebel  will  find  in  it  not  only  a 
perfectly  independent  confirmation,  but  the  true  psychological 
estimate  of  the  principles  of  Frcebel's  kindergarten  system.  We 
believe  that  this  translation  of  the  work  of  the  great  Italian  thinker 
will  prove  a  boon  to  all  English-speaking  lovers  of  true  education 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  \Jteady  in  May. 

Habit  and  its  Importance  in  Education. 

Translated  from  the  German  of  Dr.  PAUL  RADESTOCK,  by  FANNIE  A. 
CASPARI,  Teacher  of  German,  Girls'  High  School,  Baltimore,  Md. :  with 
an  Introduction  by  Dr.  G.  STANLEY  HALL,  of  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity. 5  by  7}  inches.  Cloth.  Introduction  +  115  pp.  Price  by  mail, 
70  cts. ;  Introduction  price,  60  cts. 

Prof.  Radestock  has  devoted  some  of  the  best  years  of  his  life  to 
practical  teaching  and  to  researches  in  the  principles  at  the  base  of 
most  habits.  In  this  little  book  he  draws  freely  upon  the  work  of 
men  like  Wundt,  Horwitz,  and  Lotze  in  Germany,  and  contem- 
porary writers  like  Maudsley,  H.  Jackson,  and  the  school  of  Spencer 
in  England,  and  Ribot,  Renomier,  and  Charcot  in  France. 

A  study  of  the  book  will  impress  one  anew  with  the  fact  that  r.ll 
true  education  is  but  a  building  up  of  habits ;  but  that,  in  order  to 
have  the  building  strong  and  beautiful,  both  physical  and  psycho- 
logical laws  should  be  observed.  Normal  School  students  especially 
will,  on  reading  this  book,  find  themselves  confronted  by  some  of 
the  most  fascinating  phenomena  of  mental  science,  and  will  feel 
with  renewed  vigor  what  a  responsible  thing  is  this  training  of  the 
human  soul  from  the  first  faint  dnwn  of  the  intellect  and  will  to  the 
full  glory  of  manly  and  womanly  hearts  and  minds. 


ED  UCA  TIONAL    CLA  SSICS. 


Gill's  Systems  of  Education. 

A  history  and  criticism  of  the  principles,  methods,  organization,  and 
moral  discipline  advocated  by  eminent  educationists.  By  JOHN  GILL, 
Professor  of  Education,  Normal  College,  Cheltenham,  England. 
4^  by  6|  inches.  Cloth.  viii+3i2pp.  Price  by  mail,  $1.10;  Intro- 
duction price,  $l.oo. 

School  education  has  to  become  a  science.  One  means  to  this 
end  is  to  gather  and  examine  what  has  been  done  by  those  who 
have  been  engaged  therein,  and  whose  position  or  success  has  given 
them  a  right  to  be  heard.  Others  have  been  employed,  if  not  in  it, 
yet  about  it.  School  education  at  its  present  standpoint,  is  the  result 
of  many  agencies,  individual,  social,  and  national,  and  these  have 
been  very  varied,  and  often  antagonistic.  It  has  been  a  growth,  to 
which  the  philosopher,  the  politician,  the  doctrinaire,  and  the 
amateur  have  contributed,  as  well  as  the  actual  workers  in  schools. 
With  these  it  has  been  a  course  of  efforts,  schemes,  mistakes,  and 
failures,  but  sometimes  of  partial  successes,  all  of  which  have  yielded 
something  to  the  fabric  as  it  now  stands.  The  Author's  hope  is  that 
the  sketch  here  attempted  may  stimulate  those  just  starting  in  their 
profession,  ever  to  work  with  the  purpose  of  ultimately  placing  their 
art  on  a  scientific  basis. 

Lectures  to  Kindergartners. 

BY  ELIZABETH  P.  PEABOIJY.  Published  at  the  urgency  of  a  large 
number  of  Kindergartners,  inasmuch  as  Miss  Peabody  is  no  longer 
able  to  speak  viva  voce. 

The  first  cf  these  lectures  introduced  and  interested  the  Boston 
public  in  Kindergarten  education.  The  seven  others  are  those 
which,  for  nine  or  ten  successive  years,  Miss  Peabody  addressed  to 
the  training  classes  for  Kindergartners,  in  Boston  and  other  cities. 
They  unfold  the  idea  which,  though  old  as  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and 
set  forth  more  or  less  practically  from  Comenius  to  Pestalozzi,  was 
for  the  first  time  made  into  an  adequate  system  by  Froebel.  The 
lectures  begin  with  its  natural  exemplification  in  the  nursery,  fol- 
lowed by  two  lectures  on  how  the  nursery  opens  up  into  the  Kinder- 
garten through  the  proper  use  of  language  and  conversation  with 
children,  finally  developing  into  equipoise  the  child's  relations  to 
hir,  fellows,  to  nature,  and  to  God.  Miss  Peabody  draws  many 
illustrations  from  her  own  psychological  observations  of  child-life. 


EDUCATION.  133 


Lev  ana ;  or,  the  Doctrine  of  Education. 

A  Translation  from  JEAN  PAUL  FREDERICK  RICHTER.  5  by  7^  inches. 
Cloth,  xliv  +  413  pages.  Price  by  mail,  $1.35;' Introduction  price,  $1.25. 

VXT'E  add  this  volume  to  our  series  of  "Educational   Classics"  in 
the   belief  that   it  will  tend   to   ameliorate   that   department  of 
education  which  is  most  neglected  and  yet  needs  most  care,  —  home 
training. 

Among  other  topics,  it  treats  of:  — 

The  Importance  of  Education.  Development  of  the  Desire  for  Intel- 

The  Spirit  and  Principle  of  Education.  lectual  Progress. 

To   Discover  and  to  Appreciate   the       Speech  and  Writing. 

Individuality  of  the  Ideal  Man.  Attention  and  the  Power  of  Adaptive 

Religious  Education.  Combination. 

The  Beginning  of  Education.  Development  of  Wit. 

The  Joyousness  of  Children.  Development  of  Reflection. 

Games  of  Children.  Abstraction  and  Self-Knowledge,  to- 

Music.  gether  with  an  extra  paragraph  on 

Commands,       Prohibitions,      Punish-  the  Powers  of  Action  and  Business. 

ments.  On  the  Education  of  the  Recollection 

Physical  Education.  —  not  of  the  Memory. 

Female  Education.  Development  of  the  Sense  of  Beauty. 

The  Moral  Education  of  Boys.  Classical  Education. 

A  Descriptive   Bibliography  of  Education. 

Arranged  by  topics.  By  G.  STANLEY  HALL,  Professor  of  Psychology  and 
Pedagogy,  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  JOHN  M.  MANSFIELD.  5^  by 
7^  inches.  Cloth,  oo +000  pages.  Price  by  mail,  £1.10.  Introduction 
price,  Si.oo. 

T  N  his  preface  to  this  book,  Dr.  Hall  says  :  — 

"  In  the  field  of  more  strictly  pedagogic  literature,  which  is  rela- 
tively limited,  the  material  is  yet  far  too  great  to  be  mastered  in  a  life- 
time of  the  most  diligent  reading,  and  the  reading  time  of  most 
teachers  is  quite  limited.  Hence  they  cannot  be  too  select  in  their 
choice  of  books.  .  .  .  The  habit  of  reading  what  is  beneath  one's 
level,  whether  fostered  by  a  sense  of  duty,  or,  worst  of  all,  by  a  false 
sense  of  the  authority  of  things  printed,  is  belittling,  and  the  exact 
inverse  of  educational. 

"  Teachers  who  will  be  as  select  in  their  reading  as  we  should  all 
be  in  the  society  we  keep,  and  who  will  vigorously  reject  the  second 


134 


EDUCATION. 


best,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  tenth  or  twentieth  best,  and  making  all 
reasonable  reservations,  —  may,  I  believe,  in  the  time  at  their  disposal, 
and  now  squandered  or.  print  unworthy  of  them,  reasonably  hope  to 
master  most  of  the  best,  if  they  confine  themselves  to  one  language 
and  one  department. 

"  To  do  this,  however,  not  only  is  some  hardihood  of  self-denial,  but 
also  some  knowledge  of  the  good  and  evil  in  pedagogic  print,  needed, 
and  just  this  is  what  American  teachers  are  at  present  seeking  with 
more  interest  and  in  more  ways,  as  I  believe,  than  ever  before.  In 
seeking  the  best  there  is  much  to  mislead  and  little  to  guide  teachers. 
In  the  great  work  of  designating  and  grouping  the  best,  the  present 
volume  is  only  a  hint,  a  first  suggestion.  It  is,  in  the  phrase  of  an 
educational  leader  to  whom  its  writer  has  been  chiefly  indebted  for 
suggestions  during  its  preparation,  only  a  foot-path  roughly  blazed, 
and  by  no  means  a  finished  highway,  though  the  latter  may  eventually 
follow  about  this  course.  .  .  . 

"  In  the  general  reading  of  every  teacher,  of  whatever  grade,  should 
be  included  some  work  on  the  history  of  education,  and  some  psycho- 
logical and  some  hygienic  literature.  Every  teacher  should  also  select 
some  department  or  topic,  connected  in  many  cases  probably  with  the 
teaching  they  prefer,  about  which  the  reading  should  centre.  In  this 
field  they  would  in  time  come  to  know  the  best  that  had  been  done  or 
said,  and  themselves  become  more  or  less  an  authoritative  centre  of 
information  for  others  about  them,  and  perhaps  make  contributions 
that  would  render  many  their  debtors,  not  only  by  positive  additions 
to  their  knowledge,  but  in  guiding  their  reading,  which  is  one  of  the 
greatest  aids  one  person  can  render  another.  As  teachers  thus  gradu- 
ally become  specialists  in  some  such  limited  sense,  their  influence  will 
do  more  than  has  yet  been  accomplished  to  realize  the  ideal  of  making 
their  work  professional  in  a  way  in  some  degree  worthy  that  high  term, 
and  they  will  be  able  gradually  to  effect  a  greatly  needed  reform  in  the 
present  character  of  text-books,  and  all  who  would  lead  in  public  school 
education  will  slowly  come  to  see  the  need  of  thorough  and  extended 
professional  study.1' 


N.  E.  Jour,  of  Education  :  Prof. 
G.  Stanley  Hall's  Bibliography  of  Educa- 
tional Literature  promises  to  be  the 
most  valuable  teacher's  aid  in  home 
study  ever  issued. 


We  know  of  no  man  who  is  better 
equipped  for  such  service;  and  he  has 
taken  the  time  and  been  given  all  the 
assistance  necessary  for  the  perfection  of 
the  enterprise. 


EDUCATION.  135 


Monographs  on  Education. 

TV/I"  ANY  contributions  to  the  theory  or  the  practice  of  teaching  are 
yearly  lost  to  the  profession,  because  they  are  embodied  in  arti- 
cles which  are  too  long,  or  too  profound,  or  too  limited  as  to  number 
of  interested  readers,  for  popular  magazine  articles,  .and  yet  not  suffi- 
cient in  volume  for  books.  We  propose  to  publish  from  time  to  time, 
under  the  title  of  Monographs  on  Education,  just  such  essays,  pre- 
pared by  specialists,  choice  in  matter,  practical  in  treatment,  and  of 
unquestionable  value  to  teachers.  Our  plan  is  to  furnish  the  mono- 
graphs in  paper  covers,  and  at  low  prices.  We  shall  continue  the 
series  as  long  as  teachers  buy  freely  enough  to  allow  the  publishers  to 
recover  merely  the  money  invested. 

Of  this  series  we  are  now  ready  to  announce  the  four  following :  — 


Modern  Petrography. 

An  account  of  the  Application  of  the  Microscope  to  the  Study  of  Geology, 
by  GEORGE  HUNTINGTON  WILLIAMS,  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University. 
5  by  T1A  inches.  Paper.  35  pages.  Price  by  mail,  25  cents. 


TJie   Study   of   Latin    in    the    Preparatory 

Course.  By  EDWARD  P.  MORRIS,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Latin,  Williams 
College,  Mass.  5  by  7^  inches.  Paper,  oo  pages.  Price  by  mail, 
25  cents. 

Mathematical    Teaching    and    its    Modem 

Methods.  By  TRUMAN  HENRY  SAFFORD,  Ph.D.,  Field  Memorial  Professor 
of  Astronomy  in  Williams  College.  5  by  7^  inches.  Paper,  oo  pages. 
Price  by  mail,  oo  cents.  \_Reaiiy  in  August. 

How  to  Teach  Reading,  and  What  to  Read 

In  the  Schools.  By  G.  STANLEY  HALL,  Professor  of  Psychology  and  Peda- 
gogy, Johns  Hopkins  University.  5  by  7^  inches.  Paper,  oo  pages. 
Price  by  mail,  oo  cents.  [Ready  in  September. 


HIST  OR  Y.  99 

Methods  of  Teaching  and  Studying  History. 

Second  Edition.  Entirely  recast  and  rewritten.  Edited  by  (j.  STANLKY 
HALL,  Professor  of  Psychology  and  Pedagogy  in  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity- S1A-  by  lYi  inches.  Cloth,  xiv  +  386  pages.  Price  by  mail,  $  1 .40 ; 
Introduction  price,  $1.30. 

'"PHIS  volume  contains,  in  the  form  most  likely  to  be  of  direct  prac- 
tical utility  to  teachers,  as  well  as  to  students  and  readers  of  his- 
tory, the  opinions  and  modes  of  instruction,  actual  or  ideal,  of  eminent 
and  representative  specialists  in  each  department.  About  half  the 
material  of  the  first  edition  has  been  eliminated  from  this  second 
edition,  and  new  matter  substituted  to  an  extent  which  somewhat 
enlarges  the  volume,  and  of  a  kind  which  so  increases  its  value  and 
utility  that  readers  of  the  old  edition  will  find  this  essentially  a  new 
work.  The  following  Table  of  Contents  will  give  a  good  idea  of  the 
plan  and  scope  of  the  book :  — 

INTRODUCTION.    By  the  Editor. 

METHODS  OF  TEACHING  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  By  Dr.  A.  B.  Hart,  Harvard 
University. 

THE  PRACTICAL  METHOD  IN  HIGHER  HISTORICAL  INSTRUCTION.  By  Pro- 
fessor Ephraim  Emerton,  of  Harvard  University. 

ON  METHODS  OF  TEACHING  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By  Dr.  Richard  T.  Ely, 
Johns  Hopkins  University. 

HISTORICAL  INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  COURSE  OF  HISTORY  AND  POLITICAL  SCI- 
ENCE AT  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY.  By  President  Andrew  D.  White,  Cornell 
University. 

ADVICE  TO  AN  INEXPERIENCED  TEACHER  OF  HISTORY.  By  W.  C.  Collar,  A.M., 
Head  Master  of  Roxbury  Latin  School. 

A  PLEA  FOR  ARCHAEOLOGICAL  INSTRUCTION.  By  Joseph  Thacher  Clarke,  Di- 
rector of  the  Assos  Expedition. 

THE  USE  OF  A  PUBLIC  LIBRARY  IN  THE  STUDY  OF  HISTORY.  By  William  E. 
Foster,  Librarian  of  the  Providence  Public  Library. 

SPECIAL  METHODS  OF  HISTORICAL  STUDY.  By  Professor  Herbert  B.  Adams, 
Johns  Hopkins  University. 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  STATE  AND  OF  HISTORY.  By  Professor  George  S. 
Morris,  Michigan  and  Johns  Hopkins  Universities. 

THE  COURSES  OF  STUDY  IN  HISTORY,  ROMAN  LAW,  AND  POLITICAL  ECONOMY 
AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY.  By  Dr.  Henry  E.  Scott,  Harvard  University. 

THE  TEACHING  OF  HISTORY.  By  Professor  J.  R.  Seeley,  Cambridge  University, 
England. 


HISTORY. 


ON  METHODS  OF  TEACHING  HISTORY.  By  Professor  C.  K.  Adams,  Come' 
University. 

ON  METHODS  OF  HISTORICAL  STUDY  AND  RESEARCH  IN  COLUMBIA  UMVER 
SITY.  By  Professor  John  W.  Burgess,  Columbia  University. 

PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY  AND  HISTORY. 

WHY  DO  CHILDREN  DISLIKE  HISTORY?    By  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson. 

GRADATION  AND  THE  TOPICAL  METHOD  OF  HISTORICAL  STUDY.  Part  I.— 
Historical  Literature  and  Authorities.  Part  II.  —  Books  for  Collateral  Reading. 
Part  III.  —  School  Text-Books.  Supplement. 

HISTORY  TOPICS.    By  Professor  W.  F.  Allen,  Wisconsin  University. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  CHURCH  HISTORY  (see  special  index  to  this  article).  By 
Rev.  John  Alonzo  Fisher,  Johns  Hopkins  University. 

The  following  opinions  of  the  book  will  be  of  interest  to 
teachers  and  students  of  history :  — 


Alice  E.  Freeman,  Pres.  of  Wel- 
lesley  Coll.,  Mass. :  It-  is  an  admirable 
book  in  every  way.  What  these  men 
say  in  regard  to  their  methods  of  work  is 
most  wise,  as  I  know  by  experience  as  a 
student  and  as  a  teacher.  The  "Semi- 
nary Method  "  was  an  inspiration  to  me 
under  that  eminently  good  teacher,  Prof. 
C.  K.  Adams,  and  it  is  our  method  of 
advanced  work  here.  (J^"-  16,  1884.) 

George  Lilley,  Pres.  of  Dakota 
Agricultural  Coll.,  Brookings  :  I  wish  to 
recommend  the  work  to  our  class  of  nor- 
mal teachers  connected  with  the  college. 
(April  12,  1886.) 

Paul  Frederica,  Professeur  a  I'  Utti- 
versite  de  Gand,  Ghent,  Belgium  :  Veuil- 
lez  remercir  de  ma  part  celui  ou  ceux 
des  auteurs  qui  ont  bien  voulu  me  faire 
envoyer  cet  interessant  ouvrage.  Agreez 
mes  salutations  distingues. 
(Jan.  12,  1884.) 

A.  M.  Sperry,  Supt.  of  Schools,  Dodge 
County,  Minn.  :  In  adopting  it  as  a  guide 
for  the  teachers  of  this  county  in  teach- 
ing history  in  our  common  schools  I  ex- 
press in  the  most  practical  way  possible 
my  opinion  of  its  adaptation  to  their 


needs.  It  marks  the  beginning  of  bet- 
ter work  in  history.  It  will  reveal  to  the 
teacher  the  means  of  awakening  and 
guiding  the  historical  sense  in  their 
pupils,  and  of  giving  to  the  study  its 
true  place  as  a  source  of  pleasure  and  of 
power,  not  less  in  the  common  than  in 
higher  schools.  (Fed.  21,  1884.) 

Rev.  S.  L.  Stiver,  Prin.  of  Bunker 
Hill  Academy,  III.  :  It  is  the  most  com- 
plete of  its  kind,  and  clearly  sets  forth 
the  best  general  methods  of  work  in  this 
important  branch  of  science  and  peda- 
gogics. The  appendix,  upon  historical 
outlines  and  bibliography,  is  well  worth 
the  price  in  itself,  and  should  be  in  the 
possession  of  every  well-informed  and 
progressive  teacher  of  history. 
(March  8,  1884.) 

S.  J.  Sornberger,  Teacher  of  His- 
tory, State  Normal  and  Training  School, 
Cortland,  N.  Y.  :  I  am  very  much  pleased 
with  the  book.  It  gives  to  the  teacher 
an  outlook  into  the  field  of  history  which 
without  it  would  never  have  been  real- 
ized. The  list  of  works  of  reference  is 
alone  worth  the  price  of  the  book. 
(March  17,  1884.) 


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